


A Glimpse Beyond

by NorthernSparrow



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Epic, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Plotty, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Season/Series 15, Season/Series 15 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-27
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:41:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 38,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27731689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorthernSparrow/pseuds/NorthernSparrow
Summary: A piece of rebar to the heart wasn't really the way Dean had planned to go out, but these things happen. It's over now; everything's over, and now he's in Heaven. It's a beautiful Heavenly day, on a beautiful Heavenly road, and there's even a Heavenly cassette tape playing a perfect Heavenly song. The last war is over; they won it all, victorious at last, and now all Dean wants to do is drive.The song plays, and Dean drives.At last he's at peace.Or is he?
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Comments: 733
Kudos: 1153
Collections: SPN Finale "Destiel is CANON" Collection, The Destiel Fan Survey Favs Collection





	1. Peace

**Author's Note:**

> A/N - This WIP will be updated erratically due to a crazy work schedule. I'll aim for a chapter every 1-2 weeks, but just fyi there may be long gaps sometimes. Usually I wait till I have much more written before I start posting, but after the last several crazy weeks, I feel I really want to move forward. Maybe some of the you feel the same. 
> 
> I'll confess I've been stuck for over a year unable to write until I saw where S15 ended. Usually current canon doesn't block me like that, but the sense of looming finality somehow stopped me from wanting to plot anything. I guess I wasn't sure if I would want to stay with the show. But now that the show's done, I find I can't leave these characters behind. Their potential is still so huge; their chemistry so amazing; the revelation of 15x18 so inspiring. We can take the characters where the network wouldn't. The sandbox is wide open and, this time, at last, our beautiful fanfic sand castles will STAY BUILT. No new season will coming storming in to wash it all away!
> 
> Supernatural ended with Season 15, Episode 20. But seasons always used to be longer than twenty episodes, and at the end of 20 I felt convinced that the story wasn't done. So - let's pick up partway through 20, and then move on to episode 21.
> 
> (@NorthernSprw on twitter - update alerts will be posted)

All of a sudden it's over.

One second Dean's enjoying the battle; sure, it's a bit of a scramble, a bit dicey now that they have no backup ( _would've been nice to have a third person_ crosses his mind for maybe the millionth time). But it's nothing worse than they've faced a thousand times before. One vamp does manage to toss Dean back through the air, but Dean's been flung through the air a thousand times before too, in a thousand other fights. What happens next, though, has _not_ happened a thousand times before: a weirdly nauseating blow hits him from behind.

It isn't until Dean's trying to wrestle the vamp again that he realizes his situation. Something huge has stabbed him in the back, struck like a spear right into his core, and he's pinned there, skewered like a bug.

The pain's bad. But worse than the pain is the helplessness. And worse even than that is the sudden, overwhelming certainty that there are only minutes left. Sam takes out the vamp soon enough, decapitates it neatly, and then Sam's sheathing his machete and talking about going to find the kids, but already Dean knows it's over. He knows he's dying, he's absolutely certain, he knows it to his bones. _Sense of impending doom_ is what the docs call it, don't they? But Dean knows what it really is: bleeding out. He's bleeding out. It's the feeling of blood pressure falling, and falling, and falling. His heart's been skewered; he can feel it. It's still pumping, the spike still partly plugging up its own damage, but he's slowly bleeding out, inside.

That bright fire inside him, the flame that's always been there, is flickering now, guttering down, going out. He can almost see the curtains closing.

This is it, then.

Sam's realized by now that there's something wrong, but he has no idea just how wrong. He feels around at Dean's back, tries to pull Dean off the whatever-it-is, and a sickening surge of nausea and weakness rolls over Dean.

And Dean's terrified. He's always thought he'd face death with a laugh, or at least some kind of a sardonic, world-weary sigh. But instead there's real fear. And — anger. Quite a hot surge of anger, now. Stabbed in the _back_? _Stabbed in the back_ , by an _inanimate object_ , not even by the enemy? On a goddam _vampire hunt_? He hasn't even had a real chance at his own life yet! Seems like only yesterday since Chuck went down—it literally seems like one day ago! Dean's barely had time to even think what to do next!

 _No, no, I'm free now,_ he thinks. Sam's now talking through some unlikely plan to get an ambulance, trying to believe there's a solution, but there's no chance any help can arrive in time. And all Dean can think is, _It's not fair_.

It's _so_ not fair. _I was gonna take that job_ , he thinks. He had it all worked out. _I'm gonna take that job and save up some money and open a bar in a couple years, a new Roadhouse, a place hunters can come, and Sam's gonna start up the Men of Letters again—_

_And I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna solve that puzzle that keeps eating at me, that thing that keeps bugging me, I'm gonna SOLVE it. I'm gonna get him out, get him out of there—_

None of that's going to happen now.

The anger fades.

 _I could pray to Jack_ , Dean thinks next. But Jack never answers these days. Once Jack went all divine and did his every-drop-of-rain disappearing act, they've never seen him since.

_Or I could pray to --_

Well, no. There's nobody to pray to. Not anymore.

That did remind, Dean, though, of something important. Sam's looking panicky; Sam's about to leave to try to get help. Sam hasn't fully realized what's happening, and there needs to be a conversation now. "Stay with me," Dean manages to say, and it's partly the fear, but also partly that there's stuff he needs to say. _Say it,_ Dean thinks. _Make damn sure you say it. Never leave it unsaid again_.

And so, in his last moments, Dean manages to get out a speech to Sam, quite a long speech actually (really quite a remarkably long speech, all things considered, and somewhere in there he even thinks _Just how long exactly does it take to bleed out?_ and _There was totally time to call an ambulance)._ But the critical thing is, he manages those all-important words: _I love you._

Sam already knows that, of course. There's never been any doubt, not between Dean and his little brother. That brother bond's always been there. It's good to say it anyway, it's important, but at least Sam already knew. Quite different from that other time....That other time, so long ago now. In that room in the bunker, when the Empty had come.

Sometimes it seems like he can barely remember that day. It's like it's been erased, just a hollow fuzzy half-memory now. But now and then it springs back to life, pain flaring back up like an old wound. Each time he realizes all anew, as he's realizing right now, that a dear friend had said something very important, and Dean hadn't said anything back.

When Dean closes his eyes at last, hearing Sam's sobs fade into the distance, his last emotion is simply regret.

* * *

Dean looks at the mountains.

There's a wooded mountain slope right ahead, cloaked in the deep dark green of a conifer forest. Douglas fir, looks like, and pines, on that forested hillside ahead, and nearby there's a little clump of white-trunked aspens rustling their leaves in the breeze. He looks around, trying to figure out where he is; Montana, maybe, or Washington? It all has that northwest look. Certainly doesn't look like Ohio anymore. Dark green mountains, trees, an open clearing around him. It's summertime; crickets are droning, the aspens in full leaf, the air redolent with scents of dust and grass and roadside flowers. Birdsong comes wafting through the air on a soft breeze that's making the aspen leaves quiver. A broad blue sky stretches overhead, and rolling green hills spread out in all directions.

It's beautiful.

A sense of calm comes over him. They won; he's died (something about a vampire, he can't even really remember it now). It's over, and this is Heaven. This is Dean's Heaven.

He takes a step forward and discovers he's standing by a wooden building. It looks familiar, small and boxy, its weather-worn siding flecked with a few stray bits of old paint. Maybe it’s a bit shabby, but Dean likes it; it's got an air of cozy familiarity. Dean takes another step and rounds the corner, and there's a little wooden porch, too, and a familiar face waiting for him, and he realizes he's at the Roadhouse. The original Roadhouse. Of course it would be the Roadhouse! He always wanted a bar! Everybody must be here. All his friends. It'll be the biggest party ever, there'll probably be a band, and music, and beer. Ellen and Jo, and Ash, and certainly Mom and Dad—

Except that the place seems to be oddly empty. The Roadhouse is silent; it seems deserted. But at least Bobby's here.

Bobby hands him a beer. Terrible beer, actually; it brings up a charming nostalgic feeling, but truth is, the beer's absolute crap. Dean's kind of laughing about the beer as Bobby fills him in. The walls up here have been blown down, apparently. Heaven's one big wide-open world now, everybody with little cabins here and there, free to mingle. Dad and Mom are in one direction, other friends in other directions. Jack did all this.

"Cas helped," adds Bobby. His eyebrows shoot up and he darts a sideways glance at Dean, then glances away discreetly and takes a swig of beer.

Dean's about to ask "Who's Cas?", but something about Bobby's expression seems significant — those raised eyebrows, that sideways look — and it makes him pause. Is he supposed to know who this Cas person is? And indeed the name seems familiar — in fact it's causing a pulse of adrenaline to rush through Dean's body. (Apparently there's still adrenaline in Heaven.) The thought _Cas is alive_ pops into Dean's mind, followed by _Cas got out somehow_ , yet at the very same time Dean's also still thinking _Wait, who's this Cas again?_ He tries to cover his confusion with a smile, but the smile comes out hesitant and a little lopsided, and he glances down at the ground.

For a second, there's a flicker of memory. Several flickers, in little fragments. Black wings, blue tie, a tan coat... An embrace in gray woods. Someone saying, _I'll go with you._ Someone saying, _I've got you_.

The flash of a knife. Blood on the walls. A bloody hand.

And blue eyes. There are tears, and yet there's a smile too, an absolutely radiant smile, a smile that shines like the sun even while the blackness closes in from both sides. Not the black wings anymore, but something else. Some other kind of blackness.

 _Cas—_ Dean thinks. Or, starts to think.

As fast as the memories come, they're gone, with a sensation like a door clicking shut. The name "Cas" has vanished from his head. And so has every other name. Who's the person beside him again, the older guy? Who was the owner of this bar? Who was going to be in this bar, anyway? Earlier it had seemed clear to Dean that there should be hundreds of people just inside — friends of all kinds, maybe a blonde-haired girl he used to know, maybe a brunette who'd owned the bar, maybe a mother, maybe a father; but that must have been a dream, for there's nobody here at all except the nameless older guy who's now saying something about "He'll be along." Who'll be along? It doesn't seem to matter anymore, for there's a shining black car in front of Dean now that instantly grabs his full attention.

Its long sleek outline seems to resonate with deep familiarity. It pulls at him. It's irresistible. Dean walks over, smiling, and gets in; he turns the key in the ignition; the engine rumbles to life. It feels _right_ to be sitting here, his hands gripping the leather-wrapped steering wheel. Never mind about the names that have slipped from his mind; he's back in his car! (Though it also occurs to him that this is not exactly something he's been especially craving, or even missing; hadn't he been driving it in real life just hours ago?) The fuel tank's full. The engine's purring beautifully.

There's a tape already playing in the tapedeck. Dean didn't even have to push it in, and it's cued up right to the beginning of a song. The song starts:

_Carry on, my wayward son  
There'll be peace when you are done  
Lay your weary head to rest  
Don't you cry no more_

"I love this song!" says Dean, delighted, and now he's driving, and the road is endless. It's a perfect road, winding in and out through the forested hills in the perpetual afternoon light. There aren't any other cars at all. In fact there are no other people at all. Dean is absolutely and completely alone. He drives, and the song plays.

Dean drives, and the song plays. He's utterly alone, but he's at peace.

Dean drives, and the song plays.

Dean drives, and the song plays. _Maybe I could go find that Cas person_ , Dean thinks once or twice, but each time the thought vanishes from his brain as rapidly as it had come.

Dean drives, and the song plays.

_Carry on, my wayward son  
There'll be peace when you are done  
Lay your weary head to rest  
Don't you cry no more._

_Once I rose above the noise and confusion  
Just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion  
I was soaring ever higher,  
But I flew too high...._

The song never stops. The road never ends. The sun never sets. Dean drives, and the song plays.

* * *


	2. Record Scratch

Dean drives, and the song plays.

_Carry on, my wayward son  
There'll be peace when you are done  
Lay your weary head to rest  
Don't you cry no more._

_Once I rose above the noise and confusion  
Just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion  
I was soaring ever higher,  
But I flew too high...._

Sometimes these lyrics almost seem to be talking to him, like someone's whispering suggestions directly into his ears. _I was soaring ever higher_ ; he thinks; _but I flew too high_. The song keeps insisting _Don't you cry no more,_ but at one point it occurs to Dean that maybe he _would_ cry if it weren't such a lovely afternoon and such a beautiful road, that maybe there are indeed some things to cry about. A memory surfaces: sitting on a cold floor, leaning against a brick wall, his phone buzzing on the floor. Did he cry then? It seems like he might've cried then, whenever that was. It seems like he might've cried quite a few times after that, actually, like maybe late at night, alone in bed. In fact he seems to be crying right now, eyes stinging as he tries to remember what he was even crying about. Something about wings. Something that had been left unsaid. But the thought is swept away, and on he drives.

Always the next thing he knows he's driving again, the road bending in enticing curves around the hills, the beautiful late-afternoon light slanting down, the trees rushing by, and the song starting all over:

_Carry on, my wayward son  
There'll be peace when you are done  
Lay your weary head to rest  
Don't you cry no more._

_Once I rose above the noise and confusion  
Just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion  
I was soaring ever higher,  
But I flew too high...._

* * *

Some unknown amount of time later (two hundred and sixty-four times through the song, if Dean had been able to keep count), the music abruptly stops and Dean finds himself at a bridge. _HAPPY ENDING,_ says a soft voice in his head. _THIS IS YOUR HAPPY ENDING._

 _YOU WON,_ the gentle voice goes on. It seems beatific and loving. There's a touch of femininity to it; it sounds motherly and comforting as it adds, _IT'S OVER, AND THIS IS YOUR HAPPY ENDING. AND HERE'S SAMMY, REMEMBER SAMMY? THIS IS THE REUNION SCENE! YOUR HAPPY ENDING!_

Sammy. Sammy. It's the first name Dean's been able to hold clearly in his mind for quite some time. "Sammy," Dean says aloud, delighted with his newfound ability to remember, and even say aloud, a human name. He turns: there indeed is Sammy, who turns out to be a tall man with a bit of gray in his hair. Dean looks at Sam's face, and there's a staggering moment of confusion, for that face certainly is familiar, unbelievably familiar. He KNOWS that face. He's seen it other times.

He's seen it covered in blood. Quite recently.

Very, very recently.

But there seems to be no blood now.

The memory of the blood disappears. Another scrap of information arrives, a precise parcel of information that arrives in his mind in a compact unit: SAM IS YOUR YOUNGER BROTHER.

Yes, of course, Sam is the younger brother, that's clear now, and it's certainly a genuine emotion that's running through Dean now, a intense surge of brotherly love and relief and... oddly, almost a feel of desperation. Dean grabs Sam in a tight bear hug. Sam grabs back.

There's questions Dean needs to ask, he knows that, and there's a moment when Sam, too, seems about to ask something. But it's so soporific and peaceful here, and so lovely and soothing, and the _YOU'VE BOTH WON_ again arrives in his head like a telegram beamed from some kind of celestial wi-fi, and so they just embrace. _YOU'VE WON_ , the voice repeats, peaceful and majestic, music actually playing softly in the background, and the blissful sensation of peace begins flooding through Dean once again. _YOU'VE BOTH WON. YOU CAN STOP FIGHTING. YOU CAN STOP. YOU CAN REST. LAY YOUR WEARY HEAD TO REST._

The lovely reunion hug ends and now they're just side by side on the peaceful bridge, leaning on the bridge railing and gazing out at a shallow rocky river, in peaceful companionship. Peaceful. Because this is Heaven and they are at peace. Yet there actually _are_ some questions Dean wants to ask Sam, like why the Roadhouse was so empty, and what on earth are the names of the people who should have been there. Who was that woman who used to run the place? Why wasn't she there? Where exactly are the other people who were all supposed to be there, and what was that other important name, the name of the guy who "helped"? Why are they standing on a concrete bridge staring at a bunch of rocks? What kind of Heaven is this, anyway? Dean turns toward Sam, about to ask him about all this when the majestic voice comes beaming through his head again, the peaceful music still playing serenely in the background as the beatific voice intones _WOULD YOU FUCKING STOP THAT._

At that point there's a distinct sensation of a scuffle in the background, an infinitesimally brief and furious argument that blasts past in a compressed microsecond, after which a more peaceful, more beatific, more soporific voice speaks. There's two voices, it turns out, and this is the female voice again, saying, _NEVER MIND ABOUT ALL THAT. YOU'VE WON, DEAN. YOU CAN BOTH REST. YOU CAN BOTH STOP FIGHTING. LAY YOUR WEARY HEAD TO REST._

Something about that sequence definitely had seemed not _quite_ as peaceful and blissful and divinely inspired as all the rest, but a beat later and Dean's forgotten it. He's staring out at the river, still leaning on the bridge railing, one arm over Sam's shoulders now, and Sam's here, and everything's all right.

"We won," Dean says. "We can stop. We can rest."

"Hard to believe," says Sam.

The voices seem to have gone away for a little bit, off in some invisible corner having another little argument. There's a sensation of attention withdrawing, of not being under scrutiny any more, as if an eye in the sky is at last pulling away. Dean finds he can rouse himself a little, enough to wonder where he is and what's happening.

"So this is Heaven," Sam's saying.

"Yeah, uh..." says Dean, looking around. Right. Heaven. He's in Heaven. And Sam's just died and arrived in Heaven too. "How long has it been?" asks Dean, turning back to Sam.

At Sam's puzzled look, Dean says, "How long's it been for you on Earth, I mean. Time's different here in Heaven. Or so this... uh... this guy told me. Seems like it's just been a day up here for me. I was just kinda driving around for... a while. I think I was looking for, um...somebody?" He squints into the sky, trying to remember what he'd been looking for — something about wings, something about crying — but it's gone. "Anyway, been driving a bit," he adds. "How long, do you think?"

Sam shrugs. "Years," he says. "Decades, I think? I had this whole life, Dean. A whole life down there. I had a wife. I was married. I had a kid. I got to _live_. I was an old man! I had this crazy gray hair and everything!" He laughs, grinning at Dean. "Missed you a ton, though. Oh, I named my kid after you."

Dean beams. This makes him very happy. "Tell me about him!" he says.

"Well, I named him Dean," says Sam. He pauses. "I guess that's... it?"

"What do you mean, that's it? What's he like? Your son?"

Sam just blinks at him, and Dean has to elaborate with, "Like, um, what things are he into? Does he like cars? Is he a hunter? You been bringing him up in Men of Letters style, or is he gonna do his own thing?"

"Men of Letters?" Sam repeats, like he's never heard the phrase.

Dean frowns at him. "I thought for sure you'd, like, keep all that going?" Sam looks blank, and Dean adds, "Like, open up the bunker like we were talking about? Let people use the library? Train some of the young 'uns?"

"Um..." Sam frowns down at the river. "No, I think I just... lived in a... house? I guess I shut the bunker down." Dean blinks at that as Sam adds, "My son, he was a cute kid. His clothes said 'Dean' right on them. Helped me remember his name, y'know? And... let's see. What else? Uh, he was with me when I died." Sam pauses a moment. A puzzled frown crosses his face. "I can't seem to remember anything else."

Dean's developing a theory that the bliss of being in Heaven just makes it hard to think. "It's kinda like that up here," he tells Sam. "Things are a little floaty for me too. But hey, what about the wife? Who'd you marry, was it, was it..." For once, a name actually pops up in his memory. "Eileen?"

Sam looks blank again. "Eileen? Who's Eileen?"

"You know..." says Dean vaguely, who can't seem to remember anything but the name. He straightens up from the bridge railing, waving one hand aimlessly in the air as if that will conjure up an Eileen. "Didn't you know an Eileen?"

Sam shakes his head. "Don't remember."

"Well... what was your wife's name then?"

Sam's gazing vacantly out at the river. Dean has to give him a friendly shove on the shoulder, and Sam actually almost topples over; it's like he's half asleep. Dean watches, a little worried now, as Sam catches his balance, straightens up and seems to blink back awake.

"Her name?" Dean repeats. "Your wife?"

"Oh," says Sam. The puzzled frown creases his forehead again. "I don't... huh. I... It's funny. I can't remember her name."

"What'd she look like?" says Dean.

Sam's frown deepens. "I can't remember," he finally confesses. "Is that weird? I'm trying to picture her and she just looks kind of blurry." After a moment's thought he adds, "I don't think I even had any pictures of her. You know, I had this GIANT picture of you and me and Mom and Dad, though. Like, mega-size, mounted on the wall. And all these pictures of you. Dozens! Like a frickin' shrine! It was kinda crazy, now that I think about it. But, uh..." He pauses again. "I don't think I had a single picture of my wife. Huh."

Dean's still now, looking at Sam for a long moment. Sam looks back, meeting Dean's eyes, and for a moment Sam's expression sharpens and he seems about to say something. But then his eyes slide out to the river again and a peaceful smile comes over Sam's face. Sam's at peace. Heaven's supposed to be peaceful, after all, and Sam deserves to be at peace, and he sure does look peaceful, but why does he also look... well, stoned?

Or, sedated?

Dean looks around. Something's odd. Why hasn't the sun ever set? Maybe it's just perpetually a pleasant evening in Heaven? But why isn't there _anybody else around_? The landscape, now that he peers at it more closely, looks rather bleak. "I wanted to end up with our toes in the sand," Dean mutters. "Why are we in... what is this, British Columbia or something? I wanted a _beach_." Sam's looking back at him again, an increasingly alert look on his face, as Dean adds, "Why aren't any of our friends here? Aren't there supposed to be friends here? And where's — where's —" Dean takes a breath, focusing with all his might on what he's trying to say. "I wanted us to be with our toes in the sand," he says, "remember, our toes in the sand, with Hawaiian shirts and little umbrellas in our drinks, that was the plan, you, me, and...."

The name finally arrives in his mind. And with it, a question.

"Where's Cas?" Dean says.

The river stops flowing. The peaceful wind stops blowing. The sun is frozen in the sky — as, in fact, it always has been. And then the beatific voice is speaking again — or, rather, both voices, and neither voice is sounding at all beatific anymore. It's like they've both given up on whatever mental megaphone they'd been using, so that Dean is now just overhearing their conversation. One voice, the one that had gotten a little irritated before, is now complaining in a whiny tone, "That goddam fucker just won't _stop._ Look, this isn't working."

"We already discussed this," says the second voice, the female one. "You said—"

"I _know_ I said I wanted to see the happy reunion. Well, I changed my mind, okay? They're, like, _lobotomized_. This is a _terrible_ finale. I'm gonna delete them."

Dean and Sam exchange a shocked glance. Sam's clearly heard the whole exchange too, and a sudden burst of realization flashes between them. Then Dean can feel it starting to happen, _he can feel it_ , the "deletion" approaching, an immense unstoppable force that's crystallizing around them, stilling the air, about to crush his bones, him and Sam both, about to pulverize their very atoms.

But the second voice speaks up again, the gentle female voice talking back to the annoyed one, and the female voice says soothingly, "Let me handle it. You know this is the best way. You do like them, you know you do. You'll just miss them if you wipe them away. I'll put them back in the loop and they can just stay there. They can't snap out of it on their own, you know that. Let's just go build a new sandbox and start over, huh? This world isn't worth our time anymore anyway — look, we can just put them back in the loop, and I'll just tuck the whole planet away, see, like so, I'll just put it in this box and let's just close the lid. Now, c'mon —"

They're gone.

They're gone, and Dean's driving, and Sam's beside him. They're in the big black shining car, the road's rolling away under the tires, the engine's growling, driving perpetually into the sunset. And the song plays.

_Carry on, my wayward son  
There'll be peace when you are done  
Lay your weary head to rest  
Don't you cry no more._

_Once I rose above the noise and confusion  
Just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion  
I was soaring ever higher,  
But I flew too high...._

The song plays, and the song plays, and the song plays.

* * *

The song plays seven thousand nine hundred and twenty times in a row, and each time it's the best song Dean's ever heard. Each time he's singing along, and Sam is too. It's the only song on the cassette; it's the only cassette in the car. Between iterations of the song, though, there's a three-second gap, and sometimes this three-second gap is _just_ long enough to allow the emergence of a thought.

A few times, during the three-second gap, Dean thinks, or even says, "Where's Cas?"

A few times he manages to say "Where's _Jack_?"

A few times he says "Sam--" and turns to Sam. Usually Sam's just staring out the window with a vague smile on his face. A few times Sam looks puzzled, or confused.

Once or twice Sam is turning to look toward Dean too, and their eyes meet.

But always the song starts again, and the peaceful feeling washes over them both and washes every other thought away, and on they drive.

* * *

On the seven thousand nine hundred and twenty-first time, the song begins and Dean says with delight "I love this song!" as he always does. Soon he and Sam are both singing along to the rousing a-cappella intro:

_Carry on, my wayward son  
There'll be peace when you are done  
Lay your weary head to rest  
Don't you cry no more_

As always, the instruments come in at that point, and the singer goes on:

_Once I rose above the noise and confusion  
Just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion--_

But this time, the song starts to skip.

It skips exactly like a broken record. In fact it even sounds like a broken record, complete with a record-scratch sound at the end of each couple lines:

_Once I rose above the noise and confusion  
Just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion-- _

_Once I rose above the noise and confusion  
Just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion--_

Dean's slowly thinking "Cassette tapes don't skip like that" when the skipping gets shorter:

_Just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion--_

_Just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion--_

_Just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion--_

_Just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion--_

"Illusion," Sam mutters under his breath, and Dean's thinking it too. Illusion.

_a glimpse beyond this illusion--_

_a glimpse beyond this illusion--_

_a glimpse beyond--_

_a glimpse beyond--_

Dean reaches out and hits the STOP button on the cassette player. The music goes silent. He pulls the car over to the side of the road, his mouth dry, and he and Sam stare at each other.

A thin, faint voice comes over the car speakers:

"Dean? Sam? Can you hear me? It's Jack." Jack sounds scared, and he says, "I'm so sorry. I wasn't strong enough. I'm so sorry. He fooled me. He fooled all of us. We lost. We lost. I don't know what to do."

* * *


	3. Awakening

_A/N - I have an all-day drive tomorrow (not flying due to covid) and I really wanted to post the next two chapters before I start my journey. Normally I'd do a couple more editing passes, but I've got to get to bed to get up bright & early for the drive, so please forgive any glitches and typos - I promise I'll proof them both again Saturday night!_

_We re-join our heroes on the side of the road in Heaven. Where they have just, at long last, woken up._

* * *

For a long moment Dean and Sam can only stare at each other, as they sit in the car at the side of the lovely, infinite, empty road.

"Chuck," Dean whispers at last. "This is all Chuck." He feels sick saying it. Sam nods, his face pale.

Of course it's all Chuck. Of course. Suddenly it's all clear, how ludicrous the whole story has been. How could they ever have thought they'd defeated God _in a fistfight_? Dean winces now, thinking back. How could they have thought Chuck would be channeling _all_ his divine energy to Jack through a literal physical fistfight that must have been using only one-millionth of Chuck's power? One-billionth! Chuck had destroyed _planets_! How could they ever have thought—

"Can you still hear me?" Jack says again, breaking into Dean's thoughts. Jack sounds fainter, his voice staticky. Dean and Sam both lunge for the volume knob simultaneously to try to turn the volume up. Sam gets to the knob first. Turning it up doesn't help.

"We hear you, Jack," says Dean. "But only just." He and Sam are both leaning close to the car's speakers now.

"Sorry, this connection's hard to hold," says Jack apologetically. "My power's almost gone — I think I'm using the last of it right now, actually — so I don't know how much longer we can talk. It's a spell Cas told me about—"

"Cas is with you?" Dean interrupts. It's the first time he's managed to say, or even think, Cas's name in quite a while. He knows he's still a little unclear on who exactly "Cas" is — he can only remember a few clipped, isolated facts like _angel_ and _friend_ , with some fractured images of blue eyes, a gentle face, black wings. But even just hearing Jack say that one short name summons up an instant, confused tangle of emotions — among them, apparently, an urgent compulsion to immediately check on where Cas is. "Is Cas okay?" Dean says. "He's with you?"

"No, he— uh— I— He's not here," says Jack. He sounds uncertain, and, now, sad. "I haven't heard from him since— um—" Jack's voice drops as he trails off. He finally adds quietly, "Since you told us he'd died, Dean." Jack goes silent for a few moments. Only a faint hiss of static fills the airwaves.

Dean closes his eyes, his head drooping as it sinks in: _Cas is dead. Cas is dead._ How could he ever have forgotten? It's a familiar thought, though a terrible one, and Dean knows he's been carrying this awful knowledge within himself, buried somewhere inside.

Oddly, he _still_ can't even quite remember who Cas is, or why he seems to matter so much. Yet even so, even with all the vague gaps in memory, the grief that's settling in his heart now seems as heavy as a mountain.

He feels a hand squeeze his shoulder lightly; Sam. Dean swallows and opens his eyes, giving him a quick nod, though he's not quite able to look Sam in the eyes. Instead Dean fixes his eyes on the quiet road ahead as Sam leans close to the radio again and says, "Jack, if Cas isn't there, how are you doing this?"

Jack explains, "He told me about this spell a while ago. In case I ever needed to reach Heaven. Right after, well, right after I'd ended up there myself and he'd had... to... um, rescue me. He taught me a couple emergency spells, actually. Said I should know them just in case. Said he'd used this one before? With you two?"

That catches Dean's attention, and he glances over at Sam. Sam's looking back at him.

"That time we both got shot," Sam says. "Back when— well, long time back, wasn't it?"

Dean nods. "Ten years at least, probably," he says, trying to think back. "The first Apocalypse." It's fuzzy, but it's coming back to him: Sam and Dean had both been killed, shot dead, and had ended up in Heaven. They'd had to go racing through one little Heaven after another, a whole series of little isolated Heavens, with the archangel Zachariah hot on their trail. Cas had contacted them somehow — first through a car radio just as Jack's doing now, and through a TV set.

Cas had contacted them _from Earth_ , Dean realizes. If Jack's using the same spell....

Dean leans closer to the radio again and says, "Jack, wait, you aren't in Heaven, then?"

"What? No," says Jack, his voice wavering through the static. "I haven't been in Heaven."

"What exactly happened?" asks Sam.

"Well... there was the battle, and I thought we’d won,” says Jack. “And I did bring everybody back, or... at least I think I did?" Dean and Sam exchange another glance; Jack sounds kind of uncertain about this rather critical fact. But he adds, "At least, people seem to be back. Things seem to be kind of... normal? And at first I felt... Dean, Sam, I felt so wonderful, so strong! I felt like I could, like... SEE everything, you know? Understand everything. So I went to be in the drops of rain, and for a while it felt... it felt just so... so peaceful. But then sort of gradually I realized I was _literally_ in the rain, I mean, I was... getting rained on. Literally. I woke up on the shore of that lake, where we fought Chuck, and I _was_ in the rain, but, not in a divine way, more in a, uh... " He sounds a little embarrassed as he adds, "...more in a getting-rained-on kind of way." He hesitates, and adds, "Maybe I was just getting rained on the whole time."

Dean lets out a tired half-laugh, hearing this. Beside him, Sam's shaking his head, hands clenching on his knees.

"We didn't really beat Chuck _at all_ ," whispers Sam.

"We should've known," says Dean quietly. "Chuck wasn't using enough power. I should've realized." With a sigh he adds, "Not that I've been able to think all that clearly."

Jack's been quiet, and apparently he heard what Dean's said, for he says, "I think you're right, Dean. I soaked up _some_ power of Chuck's, but not nearly all, not even close. Anyway, once I woke up, I was soaking wet and I had no power at all anymore. I was _so_ cold...I think I nearly..." His voice goes a little uneven. "I think I nearly died. I was _so_ cold. Dean, Sam — I'd thought I was so strong, I thought we'd won! I thought I could... like... be everywhere, like I was God myself, but it was all just a trick! And you were both just— just— I couldn't get you to wake up, either of you—" Now his voice is cracking.

"Jack, listen to me," says Dean. He tries to sound confident, saying, "Calm down. Take a breath. We'll figure this out. Where are you?"

Sam adds, 'Where are _we_?"

Jack's voice is lost in static for a moment, and the two brothers strain to hear. "—been trying to reach you for ages. You've—" Another burst of static. "—in some kind of loop that I couldn't break in to. But I heard a song and thought that might be part of the loop. I recognized—" (More static.) "—one of your favorites, Dean, I've heard you sing along with it a couple times, and I knew you knew the words, so—" (Another burst of static.) "—so I tried to stop the song there, at certain words, so you'd realize—"

"Smart thinking, kiddo," says Dean. The static's worse. "It's getting harder to hear you, Jack."

"—losing the spell—" Jack's voice is barely audible now. "—no power." A long burst of static drowns almost the entire next sentence. Dean's barely breathing, hunched toward the radio trying to hear. After a few seconds, a few more words come through: "—in Heaven. You've got to find a way out, because I can't seem to get in—"

Jack's remaining words are lost. There's only static now. After a few moments Dean twiddles the radio knob, a little hopelessly, but there's nothing but static on all the channels.

"I really hope he wasn't saying he was out of power," says Sam quietly.

Dean rubs his face, trying to think. "Okay. What do we know? Chuck's still in control. That was Chuck's voice we heard, on the bridge, right? Two voices, and one was complaining about us. That was Chuck. Chuck... won." It's hard to accept, but it makes sense. "We gave it our all, but he wasn't using all his power, so Jack couldn't vacuum up all his power. And then... Chuck made this illusion to make us _think_ we'd won, so we'd stop trying to kill him. Maybe he just got bored and wanted us to stop bugging him?"

"And someone else is working with him," Sam adds. "There was another voice. A woman's voice, did you hear it?"

"Amara," Dean says. Only now that he and Sam seem to have fully woken up can he put a name to the voice, but he's certain.

Sam looks at him sharply. "Amara? You sure about that?"

Dean nods. "I'm sure. That was her voice."

Sam frowns. "Chuck made it sound like he'd totally swallowed her up. I thought she was like... dead, I guess? Absorbed enough to be basically gone? We didn't hear a peep out of her during that whole fight."

"Yeah, so, about that," says Dean. He drums the fingers of one hand on the steering wheel a minute, thinking, then turns in his seat a little to face Sam. "That didn't really make sense. Amara's _his equal._ The whole cosmic-balance thing depends on the fact that they have _equal_ power. It didn't make sense that he'd just completely take her over. So... I'm guessing she kinda lay low, watching maybe, and, I don't know, maybe negotiated with him?" He pauses, thinking back on the weird conversation they'd overheard. "I think she tried to spare our lives. Talked him into parking us here like a pair of frickin' elfs on a shelf, rather than kill us. She tried to save us, if I had to guess."

"You think she's on our side?" asks Sam.

Dean shakes his head. "Not exactly." (He's finding he remembers his conversations with Amara quite clearly; the weird memory gaps seems specific to Cas.) "She's not exactly a friend... but she's not an enemy either. I don't think she'll outright kill Chuck, but she does kinda have this thing about, she'll always help me and I'll always help her."

Sam raises his eyebrows at that.

Dean just shrugs. "I don't get it either. Something about how I freed her? But if it meant she saved our lives — or, well, our souls at least — I'll take it." He taps his fingers on the steering wheel some more, thinking. "Okay, so, Chuck and Amara have gone off to make another planet I guess, Jack's on Earth, we're stuck here in Heaven, and—" A thought strikes him. "Shit. We didn't ask Jack what happened to our bodies."

"Or how much time has passed," adds Sam. "Has it been days since the battle? Years? Are we dead and buried, or did we get burned?" After a pause, he adds, "Did I even have a kid? Or a wife?" He sighs and adds, "Maybe that was all illusion too? I _thought_ forty years had gone by."

"Forty years went by in Hell for me when it was just months on Earth," Dean points out. "We really have no idea how much time has passed. Look, we're not gonna be able to answer these questions here. Jack said, we have to get out. So how do we get out?"

Sam brightens at that, and says, "I've got an idea about that. When you were all mark-of-Cain'd up, Cas and I contacted Bobby through a medium this one time." Dean nods — he's heard the story. Sam goes on, "Cas said all the individual Heavens had a doorway out to, like, some kind of hall, the angels' part of Heaven I guess, like the backstage area. He told Bobby to look for something unusual, something that looked out of place, and it'd open up that door."

"So there's a door here in _our_ Heaven?" Dean says. "A door to that hall?"

Sam shrugs. "Worth a try. So... let's look for something unusual. Something out of place. I mean it might even be something here in the car. Cas said it can be little."

Dean eyes the car with fresh eyes. Does everything look normal? He checks the gear levers, the steering wheel, he looks around on the seat. Sam flips open the glovebox, and Dean even cranes his head around back to check the back seat, but there's nothing there but the green cooler, and nothing inside the cooler but beer. He's pleased about the beer, actually — until he tries to pick one up and discovers it's welded into the cooler. The entire cooler, and the ice and beer, won't come apart from each other.

"Sam, look at this," Dean says. He shows Sam, trying to pick up a beer. The whole cooler lifts up. It's like a single plastic prop that had been cast all at once. "It's fake! The beer's not real!"

Sam frowns. "Well, that's certainly unusual. Can you get a door to open?" Dean pulls at the fake beers for a while, and wriggles around so he can lean full over to the back seat and upend the cooler totally. He tips it on its side, then upside down. Nothing seems to happen.

Sam's peering around outside. He reports, "I don't see a door opening up."

"That _fucker_ ," says Dean. "I don't think this has anything to do with the door. I think this is just... this is just _lazy_ , is what it is! He couldn't even be bothered to give us real beer!" He yanks the cooler back upright, slams the cooler lid shut and slumps around to face front again, annoyed now. And disturbed, he realizes. "This isn't our Impala," Dean says slowly. "The real Impala's on Earth. This isn't really Baby. It's just for show."

Right up until a few minutes ago when Jack had made contact, the car had seemed like home. It'd been familiar and enticing when Dean had first set eyes on it. Now it feels claustrophobic — stifling and cramped — and suddenly Dean has to get out. He flings the driver's door open, jumps out and takes a few steps away from the car.

Once outside he feels a little better. The breeze feels good (even if it's a fake Chuck breeze); the trees (fake Chuck trees, he can't help thinking) are at least somewhat pleasant to look at it. It's still the perpetual sunny afternoon, the sun never quite moving, and Dean knows now that none of it's real (not in the Earth sense of "real", anyway), but at least it feels a bit better to be outside on his feet. As Sam climbs out of the other side of the car, Dean says, "One of the _million_ things I'll never forgive Chuck for is not even giving us some decent beer. What kind of crappy half-assed Heaven is this, anyway?"

"Focus," says Sam drily. "Let's check out the car a little more. You check under the hood, I'll look in the trunk."

It's as good as an idea as anything, so Dean walks to the front of the car and feels under the hood for the edge of the hood latch. But he can't find it. There's no hood latch. Puzzled, Dean gets on his hands and knees to peer under the car, craning his head to peer up at the engine.

The front of the car's a hollow empty shell. For a moment Dean can't even take in what he's seeing. "There's no engine!" he reports to Sam. "How does this thing even run?"

Sam just says, "Come look at the trunk."

Dean scrambles to his feet and joins Sam at the trunk. There at least _is_ a trunk, which is an improvement over the non-opening hood and the total lack of an engine. The trunk even seems, on a first look, to be full of their usual weapons. But Sam picks up a machete and waves it at Dean. It flops around in Sam's hands; it's like it's made of some kind of rubber. Dean sees his ivory-handled pistol and grabs it. It feels all wrong; Dean knows at once, by the weight, that it's fake. The magazine won't come out; there aren't any bullets; the trigger can't even move. He sets it down, more bothered than he wants to admit by the discovery that some of his dearest possessions seem to have been turned into caricatures of themselves. He pulls out their sawed-off shotgun next, only to find it's a bad rendition of a shotgun that it's almost unrecognizable, just a shotgun-shaped lump of some kind of dull metallish material.

"Props," says Dean at last, tossing the fake shotgun back into the trunk in disgust. "It's like that weird TV world we went to that one time. Everything's just stage props."

Sam's been checking out every fake weapon carefully, turning them over and poking at them methodically. He explains, "I’m just trying to see if anything might make the door open up. The door to the hallway. You keep looking around for a door — I'm gonna keep just, well, fiddling with stuff." So Dean looks around the trees, trying to keep an eye out for a magical door of some sort (he's hoping it'll be obvious) as Sam pulls one fake weapon out of the trunk after another. 

Soon the trunk's emptied out. Sam tosses the last fake weapon on the ground, the grenade launcher (Dean's especially saddened that this one's just a prop) and then Sam checks the trunk itself, running his fingers along the crevices and peering into every shadowy nook. But there's nothing. And though Dean keeps looking in all directions, no door appears.

With a sigh, Sam straightens up, saying, "Nothing. Why'd he even bother making a trunk and all these weapons? Especially when he didn't bother to make an engine?"

"Because we open the trunk when we're doing one of his ever-so-exciting stories," says Dean. He shoves one foot idly at the stack of useless weapons. "He likes this stuff. He thinks it's fun. Part of the adventure. Also, we never open the hood."

"We open the hood a _lot_ ," Sam objects. "You're working on this car all the time! You do oil changes, and tune-ups, and —"

"Not during hunts, I meant," points out Dean. "I don't mess with the engine _when we're on a hunt_. Meaning, Chuck's probably never seen the hood open. So it never occurred to him to put an engine in this..." He gestures at the car. "This... I don't even know what to call it anymore. It's not Baby. This... cardboard black box. He never thought we'd look at the engine. The whole car's just for show."

Sam moves up the side of the car a little to trace one finger along its shining hood. "Not a speck of dust on it, either. After all that driving."

Dean nods. "It's not real driving. It's not real dirt, not a real road... not a real car."

Sam says quietly, "Are we a real us?"

"Don't go there," says Dean shortly. It's beyond creepy that Chuck's apparently been able to mess with their memories, actually go _into their minds_ , and Dean finds that he doesn't want to think about that any more than he has to. Hopefully the fact that memories do keep resurfacing means that Chuck isn't very good at rewriting minds.

Dean takes a step back and puts his hands on his hips, tipping his head to the side a little as he regards the fake Impala. Heaving a sigh, he finally reaches out, slams the trunk closed, and says, "Well, wherever this door-to-the-hallway is, apparently it's not in the car. We'll have to check the surroundings."

"Into the woods?" Sam asks.

"Into the woods," Dean agrees.

* * *


	4. Into The Woods

* * *

Just in case, they arm themselves with some of the half-formed weapons from the Impala trunk, on the theory that even if the guns aren't real guns, they can at least be used as clubs. Dean grabs the pseudo-shotgun, and Sam takes a crowbar (it's not real iron, but it's got some heft to it). They set out across a grassy roadside verge toward the trees, walking at right angles to the road.

"Look at every tree," Sam suggests. "The hallway door could be on the other side of a big tree, right? Or, look for a lever or something. Or... I don't know, a doorknob? Something out of place, remember."

Dean nods, though he's feeling a little uncertain. _What chance do we really have?_ he thinks. _Can we really break out of this_? He can't help pointing out to Sam, "Remember how Amara said, 'They can't break out of the loop on their own'? Did you hear that?"

"Yes, and I'm trying not to think about it," says Sam, with a sad little laugh. "I'm hoping that Jack waking us up counts as not being on our own."

"That's a nice thought," agrees Dean. "Well, all we can do is keep trying."

They enter the trees, walking a few yards apart from each other to widen their search area. Dean dutifully checks a few aspens, and a fir, and some other kind of conifer (a spruce, maybe, he thinks), and some bushes. They look at every tree, poke at every bush, look ahead periodically for anything interesting in the distance, and study the ground. After a few uninteresting minutes of this, Sam starts walking all the way around each large tree he comes to, keeping one hand on it in case he'll be able to feel a door that he can't see. It seems like a good idea, so Dean sets his hand on the nearest tree trunk too, planning to walk around it. But as soon as he sets his hand on the trunk, he's overwhelmed by a piercing new memory: a gray forest, gray woods all around, an iron-gray sky overhead... a feeling of fear, and of time running out... his hand on a tree trunk... praying.

Praying to Cas.

The rest of the memory won't come. Dean grits his teeth, closing his eyes. Something's missing about Cas, something important. Several somethings, actually. And he can't dig any of it up. He can't even seem to picture Cas's face clearly. _Cas, Cas, Cas,_ he thinks now, oddly certain that Cas is somebody that he can pray to. Even though he knows now that Cas is, apparently... dead. Dead angels don't always stay dead, do they?

Dean prays. Just in case.

_Cas, help me out here. Sam and I are stuck on a road in Heaven and can't get loose. Also I forgot something. I can't make my brain work. I forgot something. I think Chuck wiped something. Something important. About you._

_Something really important._

"You okay?" says a voice, and Dean opens his eyes and lets out a gasp of air, only now realizing that he's been holding his breath. He's still standing by the tree, one hand on its roughened bark. For a dizzying moment he's almost got a clear memory of why he was in the gray woods, what he’d been so worried about, why he’d been praying — but then the memory slams shut with a mindshaking mental crashing sensation, like Dean's literally run headlong into a brick wall. He’s physically shaken, leaning onto the tree now just to keep his balance. And then he's utterly lost, with not the slightest idea where he is, or who he is, or who the tall man with the worried expression is who's striding hastily over to him now.

Another gasp of breath and it starts to return. _I'm Dean,_ he remembers, and he repeats it to himself. _I'm Dean. I'm Dean Winchester. My brother is Sam_. _And my angel friend is— my angel, my friend, is named—_

"Hey, hey! You with me? You all right?" Sam's saying. He grabs Dean by one shoulder, shaking him a little.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm okay," mutters Dean, straightening up slowly. "Fuck, Sam, he has _messed_ with me. If I think about— about— about— _dammit_! About our, our, our angel friend, if I try to remember _anything_ about him I just go totally blank."

"About our angel... do you mean Cas?" says Sam.

_Cas._

Dean swallows and nods, grateful to reclaim the name "Cas" once again. "Cas. Yeah. Damn, I keep forgetting his name! And... I know there's things about him that I can't remember. I keep having these thoughts about, there's something I didn't say, there's something I gotta do, there's something that happened... and I just can't seem to pin it down!" He looks at his hand, still resting on the tree trunk, and adds, "Every now and then something brings it halfway back. Like putting my hand on the tree trunk, just now."

"Well, at least I can remember him, even if you can't," says Sam. "My memory's pretty messed up too, but I don't seem to be having any problem remembering Cas."

"Funny how we're forgetting different things," says Dean. "Like you forgetting—" Dean stops short.

He'd been about to say "Eileen", but a thought has just struck him. He’s feeling steadier now, so he drops his hand from the tree, and looks straight at Sam, studying him.

Sam looks back quizzically. "What?"

"Tell me your girlfriend's name," says Dean. "Not your blurry wife. The girlfriend I knew. Your last girlfriend, that you were going out with when we were living in the bunker together."

Sam stares back at him, wordless. The blood's actually draining from Sam's face, and he's gone tense, both his hands tightening now on his crowbar.

"You can't come up with her name, can you," Dean says quietly. "A few minutes ago you could. But it's gone now, isn't it?"

"I... just... remember a... wife?" Sam says desperately. "That... blurry wife? But... I _know_ there was a girlfriend, I _know_ there was — she was a hunter, right? Was there..." He hesitates. "I have this feeling like she... used her hands a lot? I feel like I'm seeing hand gestures."

"Eileen," Dean informs him. "Your girlfriend's name was Eileen. And yeah, she's a hunter. Damn good one. Deaf, too, by the way. What you're remembering is her signing."

Sam lets out an audible gasp of air when he hears the name, and his shoulders actually sag with relief. " _Eileen_ ," he repeats to himself. " _Eileen_."

"I've felt pretty much stoned the whole time I've been here," says Dean, "But I'm thinking it's not just generic vague stoned. It's not just that they kinda, anesthetized us. They've deliberately wiped out certain things."

"Cas for you?" says Sam. Dean nods, and Sam says, "And for me, um, um, _Eileen_ , Eileen, Eileen, Eileen. Right. They wiped Cas for you, Eileen for me."

Slowly they start walking again, desultorily still checking trees.

"But, _why_?" says Sam. "Why those two people specifically?"

Dean thinks about that, and then it hits him. He stops in his tracks and actually groans, casting his eyes to the sky and muttering, "You _fucker_." To Sam he says, "Perfect brother ending."

Sam frowns back at him, and Dean clarifies, "Can't have that perfect brother ending — dramatic death scene and everything, long separation, happy reunion in Heaven — if we're distracted by other people! I mean, why wasn't Eileen on that bridge for you? Or your wife, if she even existed? Why is your Heaven only _your brother and not your actual real-life girlfriend?_ Come to think of it, why wasn't Eileen _with us_ on our last hunt together, in that barn? Why were we even _doing_ that hunt instead of trying to save, trying to save, I wanted to save...I had a plan to save... C-Cas?" (He stutters on the name, but manages to remember it this time.) "Why _the hell_ wasn't I thinking about Cas? Chuck wanted us focused on each other, so he wiped out anybody else from our heads who would distract us."

Sam's expression is tightening into something approaching fury. His jaw's clenched; a muscle jumps in his neck. Dean says, grimly, "You look about like I feel."

"That... _bastard_ ," says Sam at last.

"Let's keep moving," suggests Dean at last. "We gotta stay focused." Sam nods, and they head on, silent.

Dean glances back over his shoulder to get his bearings; the Impala's still just barely in view behind them, just a little glint of glossy black in the distance through the trees. He turns away and follows Sam, deeper into the woods. As they walk, Dean's repeating _Cas, Cas, Cas_ to himself, and he's pretty sure that Sam's repeating _Eileen._

* * *

The tree-checking isn't turning up much, but they can't think of anything better to do, so they keep going, in the hope that eventually they'll start climbing up one of the green hills ahead and at least get a better view of their world. So they keep going, looking at one tree after another. Big trees, little ones, conifers, aspens; they check them all. _Aspens, firs, a spruce_ , thinks Dean, quickly checking each tree in turn. _Aspens, firs, a spruce_... On they go. They inspect each tree from all angles; they poke at boulders, pull on branches to see if they seem real (or, real-ish), look through every shrub, and look at the patterns of leaves and stones on the ground. But it all looks normal.

In fact, it looks...repetitive? Dean's soon becoming convinced that there's a pattern in the trees; the _Aspens, firs, spruce_ isn't random. It's an actual sequence. Three aspens, five firs and a spruce, over and over, he realizes. Right now he's at a clump of five Douglas firs, three big ones and two little ones in a tight group together, and he could swear he's checked a _very similar_ set of five firs just a minute ago. In fact when he looks around he realizes there's an identical clump of five firs not twenty yards away from the clump he's already investigating. And another clump of five beyond that.

"He copy-and-pasted the fucking _trees_ ," Dean finally says. "He couldn't even be bothered giving us _original trees!"_

But Sam makes a hushing gesture with one hand. He points ahead, whispering, "Heads-up. Clearing ahead."

Dean looks ahead where Sam's pointing. The slanting afternoon light is brighter up there, the trees thinner; it looks there's some kind of long break in the forest just up ahead. In fact, there's something glinting. Sam raises his crowbar, and Dean hefts his fake shotgun. They inch closer.

The glint resolves into a shine of chrome and black. Improbably shiny black.

It's the Impala.

It's the _other side_ of the Impala. Parked on the same road they'd left it on. They'd walked away from the right side of the car; they're approaching its left side now.

"What the..." Sam murmurs. They walk closer and come to the end of the trees, and there's the road, and there's the Impala, parked on the far side of the road.

Dean struggles to grasp what's happened. They'd walked into the woods on one side of the road, and have now emerged on the _other_ side of the _same road._

The two brothers walk silently across the road, and inch cautiously up to the car. It's definitely the same car; there's a pile of fake weapons on the ground near the trunk. Dean peers inside the open driver's-side window. There's a cassette tape on the front seat. He reaches through, picks it up, and shows it to Sam. The label reads: "Carry On Wayward Son - Kansas - INFINITE LOOP"

Dean tosses the cassette back into the car in disgust. "The woods just lead us back to the car," he says. "World's smallest universe. It's, like, five hundred yards wide at most. And the trees are _the same trees_ over and over."

They're both quiet a long moment. Then Dean says, "We gotta look for another road."

"There's just one road!" says Sam. He raises both his arms, pointing ahead with one hand and gesturing with the crowbar in the other direction. "It's a loop! An infinite loop, like it says on that freakin' cassette! This road just does the same damn loop no matter how many hundreds of times we drive it! There's no other road!"

"Maybe, maybe not," says Dean. He moves to the driver’s side and pops the door handle; the door swings open with a creak. _At least he got the creak right_ , thinks Dean. _He gets some things right. But he misses a lot of things too._ "This Heaven was a rush job," he says to Sam. "Chuck was careful about a few things, like making the inside of the car look decent, and trying to wipe out memories of certain other people. And hiding the door-to-the-hallway, or maybe even not having a door. But the more we look, the sloppier it gets. The memories aren't staying wiped, for one thing. And I'm thinking he might have grabbed sort of a default Heaven. Everything looks kind of copied-and-pasted."

"So?" says Sam.

"So... Remember the first time we came up here? That time we were going back through childhood memories? Every Heaven had a road, remember? A metaphorical road, at least. What was it called...the Axis Mundi."

Sam's nodding. "Ash had a sigil that was kind of a short-cut," he says. "Don't remember it, unfortunately."

"But even without that sigil, we were able to get from one Heaven to another by following the Axis Mundi."

"I thought that all disappeared when they put the doors in?" Sam says.

Dean shrugs. "We don’t know that for sure. The Axis Mundi was in all the Heavens for ages and ages, wasn't it? And it was in all the Heavens back when Chuck was making Heavens himself, personally. So if Chuck kinda grabbed one of his old default, off-the-rack Heavens, maybe it's got an Axis Mundi? Maybe the Axis Mundi's still in some of the other Heavens too? Like a back door. And if we can find it... well, it might only lead to that garden again... but maybe we can find Joshua there? Or somebody. Maybe at least somebody to talk to, who might know something." He frowns ahead at the road. "The Axis Mundi always looked like a path or a road, remember? _This_ road doesn't seem to have led us anywhere, but..."

Sam's nodding. "But maybe there's an intersection with another road that we didn't notice. We haven't driven the loop again since we really woke up; we might've missed something."

"Yeah, another road, or, a footpath or hiking trail, I don't know, something. Let's go down the road and just see if we can spot anything that looks like it might be that Axis Mundi."

For a moment they both look at the road ahead. It narrows in the distance and vanishes around a tree-clad hill. Once it had looked lovely; now it looks lonely, and somewhat ominous.

"Though... I suppose it might just put us back in the loop," Dean says. The thought chills his blood — him and Sam driving this empty road in a little pocket-universe loop by themselves, around and around, _forever_. With Jack out of power and unable to break through again. 

And Cas stuck in the Empty.

Forever.

"We gotta try," says Sam. "We _have_ to. We have to risk it." There's a bite to his voice, and Dean glances at him. Sam walks around to the other side of the car and pulls the passenger door open. He pauses, looking at Dean across the sleek, shining roof of the fake Impala, and he says, "We're not done, Dean. You know we're not. That ending they gave us..." He hesitates, holding Dean's eyes. "You, dying in that barn. Me having that weird blurry life. Even if that was real— maybe it was, I don't know — it's not the right ending for us, it's _not_. You know it, I know it. Chuck was just _fixated_ on one of us dying and the other surviving, and even though he couldn't make one of us actually kill the other, it's like he decided just the same, one brother's gonna die somehow, one's gonna live. And he just... _forced_ that ending on us. But it's not enough just to have _an_ ending, just to end up in Heaven — we gotta have an ending that's _worth it_. I want a _life_ , Dean. A life I actually remember. I don't just want a, a, a montage of blurry moments and a giant portrait of Mom and Dad and us on the wall _and no pictures of anybody else._ I want a real life. And you want a life too, you know you do."

Dean gives a little shrug at that. "I did always used to say I'd die on a hunt, y'know."

Sam lets out an exasperated sigh. "Yeah, but that doesn't mean you _wanted_ it. You _hated_ that idea, you just kept saying it because you were trying to accept it! You could feel Chuck channeling you that way. But it is _not_ what you wanted, it's _not_ what you deserved, and it's not what I deserved either. So... we gotta try this. If we fall asleep again, Jack'll wake us again, somehow. Or we’ll wake ourselves. We'll find a way. We gotta find Jack, and we gotta get back to Earth. _We're not done_ , Dean."

And while Sam's been talking, Dean's been feeling a spark inside, like a slow-burning coal lighting up, an old fire coming back to life. The fire that had died out on that awful night in the barn.

"That's a pretty good speech," he says to Sam. "Not bad for a little brother." Sam laughs. Deans grins back at him and nods, saying, "Okay. We'll risk driving down the road again. We look for that Axis Mundi. We'll look for some different ending. For you, for me, and y'know what, also for Eileen, and... and..." There's that hitch in his mind again, that hollow space, that missing piece, but he manages to say it: "And for Cas."

Together, they both settle into their seats. Dean takes a breath, and turns the key. The motor springs to life — or, at least, there's the sound and the rumble of an engine (apparently Chuck's taken pains with all the Impala sound effects). The gas gauge still reads as full. Sam picks up the Carry On cassette, eyeing it thoughtfully, but Dean bats it out of his hand, knocking it onto the car’s floor. "We are _not_ playing that song again."

"It did wake us up, in the end," says Sam.

"I don't know if it woke us up or put us to sleep, but I'm not gonna risk it."

"Pity, in a way," says Sam. "It's a good song."

"It's a great song," says Dean, "And I'm not gonna let Chuck ruin it for me. But I've heard it enough for today." With a unexpected surge of hope, he swings the Impala back on to the endless road.

* * *

_A/N - Next two chapters are plotted out, but I'm not sure how much writing time I'll get these week. I'll try my best. Thanks for reading - and please leave a comment! Your comments are what keep me going :)_


	5. The Loop

_A/N - I've been working on the next pair of chapters for several weeks, but have been very distracted by first, a major scientific conference that I'm helping to run this week that had to be shifted to all-online (ironically, it had originally been scheduled to take place in downtown Washington, D.C.) - and second, of course, all the other events of the week then absolutely commanded all my attention. I haven't gotten much else done & haven't been sleeping much (especially Wednesday night). I found though that today I wanted to get back to Sam & Dean, and their quest for the Axis Mundi. Sometimes it's a lot more appealing to think about how to defeat God, escape Heaven, and rescue angels than how to solve the problems of the real world. At any rate - if you're in the mood for a little break too, here's the next chapter. Next one will post later this weekend._

* * *

As soon as they've swung back onto the road, Dean's first instinct is to put pedal to the metal, as if they can burst out of their little Heaven and fly right back to Earth if he just drives as fast as possible. But he's barely put the car in gear when an uneasy memory comes to mind of the trance they'd been in before.

 _Don't want to end up like that again. Keep it slow_ , he cautions himself, holding the faux-Impala to a sedate pace. Somehow, faster speeds seem hazardous, like it might prove too hypnotic. _Stay alert. Keep looking around. Stay awake. Glimpse beyond this illusion, right?_ That lyric, _Just to get a glimpse beyond this illusion,_ had been the thing that had finally caught his attention — and Sam's — and had snapped the trance. Maybe keeping that phrase in mind will help?

"A glimpse beyond this illusion..." mutters Dean, to himself, as the car creeps along. "Glimpse beyond...."

"Glimpse beyond five miles an hour, maybe?" suggests Sam. "Pretty sure I could walk faster than this."

That, at least, makes Dean laugh. "Yeah, okay, point taken. But I wanna avoid, y'know, sinking into that open-road feeling. That driving trance, you know?"

Sam nods, but says, "Not sure speed matters. 'Cause, even when you were standing totally still with your hand on a tree, you were still zoning out. And so was I, now and then." He adds, thoughtfully, "I don't think it's the car, exactly, but... something about this whole place. Anyway, you could give it a _little_ gas."

"It's not even _gas_ ," says Dean, bothered all over again by the reminder that the "car", such as it is, doesn't even have an engine. "There's probably not even a gas tank. I don't know what pressing on the pedal even _does_." But cautiously he pushes the pedal down a little farther, and whether it's illusion or not, the car gradually speeds up, the speedometer needle gradually creeping up to twenty miles an hour, then thirty.

Dean eventually settles in at a still-cautious forty miles an hour, still muttering "Glimpse beyond this illusion," to himself now and then. Sam clicks the radio back on in case Jack might be able to call again; it's only static, on all the channels, but after a quick discussion they decide to leave the radio on anyway, on low volume, the staticky hiss just audible in the background. Just in case.

Minutes tick by as they drive along, both brothers scanning the road ahead and the trees on either side, looking for any sort of intersection with another road — the Axis Mundi, hopefully. But there's only the one road. For a long time. It's paved most of the way, with a few stretches of picturesque dirt road here and there. It curves around a dark forested mountain (a mountain that looks somewhat familiar), it dips down into shady valleys, it rises up over rolling hills... but there's no intersections at all.

"I really haven't seen anything unusual," comments Dean eventually. Just then they round a corner to find that they're suddenly in a region of perpetual sunset, the sun abruptly much lower in the sky and tinged with orange. He adds, "Okay, so maybe the sun jumping around is a _little_ unusual. But, no other roads."

"We just gotta keep looking," says Sam. "Gotta stay sharp. The Axis Mundi's gotta be here somewhere. At least we're staying awake this time. Oh, hey... just as, like, a little test, what's your angel friend's name?"

"Castiel," Dean responds immediately, gratified to find that Cas's name is still clear in his mind. "And your girl?" he fires back.

"Eileen," says Sam. "Well, that's good at least. Maybe we're hanging onto our memories now."

"Tell me something more about Eileen," prods Dean. "You got any actual memories in there, or just the name?"

"Dark hair. Big brown eyes," says Sam. Dean glances over at him; Sam's got a soft smile on his face, which is nice to see. Sam adds, "Great smile too. Signs, also reads lips. I... did I... " He hesitates. "Did I... bring her back from the dead?"

Dean nods.

Sam says, "Okay, then, some memories are back. But I think not all. I feel like I'm still missing stuff. I feel like we had... several dates, maybe?" He sounds quite uncertain.

"I didn't exactly keep count, but definitely a string of get-togethers," says Dean. "Including, just by the way, some where you came back wearing slightly different clothes than you'd started out in." He gives Sam a cheerful wink.

He'd thought that would cheer Sam up, but instead Sam looks bothered. "Oh..." says Sam. It's clear that particular detail had totally left his mind.

Once Dean thinks about it for a moment, he realizes that Sam's probably just realized he's forgotten some pretty important things about the state of his relationship with Eileen.

Sam goes silent for a bit. Dean tries to stay quiet, giving him a moment, and thinking, _Amazing Sam doesn't remember actual hookups with Eileen_. _That's gotta suck._

It occurs to him to wonder if anything equivalently important might have been erased from his own mind about Cas.

It occurs to him, in fact, to wonder why Cas is the only person he seems to have forgotten. They each seem to have forgotten just one person. Eileen makes sense, for Sam. Eileen had obviously been important. But why Cas, specifically, for Dean?

Though... there does seem to be a certain... well, a certain weight to his fragmented memories of Cas, a certain sense of significance. A certain something....

But whatever the "something" is, it probably couldn't be _equivalently_ important. After all, Eileen had been Sam's actual girlfriend. His partner. A romantic partner. That's huge. That's something that would clearly distract Sam quite a bit (if he'd been able to remember her, that is), enough to mess up Chuck's intended "happy ending" reunion scene. Sam wouldn't have been able to act truly happy if he'd been worrying about Eileen. But Cas, in contrast, had only been Dean's friend...right? "Best" friend, Sam had said, and, sure, best friends are important, but, still, not the same as an actual romantic companion...

...right?

Or... could....

Sam breaks into his thoughts with, "Anyway, it's your turn with the memory-check: now you tell me something about Cas. Some details."

"Oh, um...." says Dean, his train of thought broken. "Sure, okay." And actually it suddenly seems like a very appealing idea, a totally compelling idea in fact, to concentrate very hard on the thought of this Castiel and see if, maybe, Dean might be able to picture his face. So Dean concentrates hard as they drive along. "Let's see. Dark hair. Kinda fluffy dark hair, I think? Great smile...though...." There's that fuzzy flickering image again for a moment, of a smile through tears. It's just a quick flash of an image, but it brings with it an extremely wobbly, unbalanced feeling, like the image is both very wonderful and simultaneously very terrible at the same time.

For a moment Dean's throat starts seizing up, his chest hurting, and he has to clear his throat and shake his head to disperse the haunting image.

Finally Dean says, "I feel like it was... hard to get him to smile, maybe? Like he didn't smile that often? But when he really smiles, he _means_ it. Just...I just feel like it was such a great smile, you know?" Another image becomes clear: "Oh and, blue eyes. Definitely blue eyes."

Sam's been silent through all this. Dean darts a glance over at him, wondering if Sam's gotten lost in thought about Eileen again, but actually Sam's looking right back at Dean with a rather thoughtful look on his face.

Dean reminds him, "You're supposed to be looking for the Axis Mundi. Not staring at me all weird."

Sam laughs a little and turns to face front again, inspecting the road. He says, "I was just thinking that I don't think I ever noticed Cas's eye color."

"How could you not?" says Dean. He's genuinely surprised; Cas's eye color seems to be one of the very clearest facts that Dean's retained about him. "I can barely remember the guy, and even I can remember his eyes are blue. Like, SUPER blue. How could you not have noticed?"

Sam chuckles. "Guess I never stared into his eyes for all that long."

"How did you manage to avoid _that_?" Dean demands, for one of the other things that he does seem to remember now, something that's suddenly coming back quite clearly, is what seems to have been a decade-long series of staring contests with Castiel. "I know I don't remember much, but I do remember these like... _stares_. Wasn't there like this _minute-long_ stare this one time? Just for example. And I know that wasn't the only time. He's got to have been numero uno with the staring contests."

"You do realize that it takes two to tango?" says Sam, with another chuckle.

...And there's that wobbly feeling again. Dean tries to brush it off, rolling his eyes at Sam. "Whatever," he mutters. "Just keep looking for another road."

"Never stopped," says Sam, turning to the woods again.

* * *

Around the next bend they go, and the next, and the next. The sky dims; suddenly it's a quiet stretch of moonlit evening, and then, around the next turn, abruptly back to cheerful afternoon sunlight again. Dean blinks with the sudden change in illumination, slowing the car till he's sure he's got control. He banks the car smoothly around the next curve — which leads to an area that seems to be perpetual dawn. A lemon-yellow sun's now very low on the horizon, the clouds tinged with the delicate pinks of sunrise. The abrupt changes of sun position are getting less startling, but it's definitely weird.

"It's not a _bad_ road, exactly," he says, squinting at the pastel-pink sunrise on the horizon ahead of them. "It's... pretty enough, I guess. But kind of surreal."

"Yeah," says Sam. "Dark fir trees everywhere and the sun jumping around is just spooky."

"Not exactly nirvana, either," Dean points out. He's thinking now about what Heaven is really supposed to be, and he says, " _Heaven_ , Sam. This is supposed to be _our Heaven_. Actual Heaven! Paradise! Bliss! But... I just have a hard time thinking this is _my_ Heaven. Or yours, either. But, it's not _bad_ , either; it's not torture or anything."

"Yeah, I'm not exactly, oh-my-god-this-is-the-Bad-Place, or anything," agrees Sam. "But it’s kind of bland. Except for the sun jumping around, which is at least interesting, but... well, I know this might be shocking to hear, but, driving around forever isn't _actually_ my absolute number one pick of stuff I want to do for all eternity."

"It's more like Chuck just made kind of a crude guess at what we might like," says Dean. "Or what he wants us to like."

Sam nods, adding, "At least we're staying awake, I think, but with the sun leaping around like that, any sense of time I used to have is all shot to hell. I feel like we've only been going ten minutes... or has it been an hour?"

"I can't tell," said Dean, "and I've got zero clue how many miles. The odometer isn't even moving." He peers ahead at the road, trying to gauge how many miles ahead he can see and how long the road might actually be — and then he notices a dark forested mountain that has just slid into view ahead of them. A very familiar-looking dark forested mountain, clothed in Douglas fir and clumps of aspen. And the occasional spruce.

Dean frowns, gesturing ahead with one hand. "So, that hill ahead. With all the dark trees. Does that look familiar to you?"

"I was just about to say," said Sam, "that I'm fairly certain we've seen that hill already. Oh, sure enough, look! At the side of the road! Up on the right there. Wait, wait, pull up."

There's something at the side of the road; some kind of little dark lumpy pile. Dean brakes the car to a halt as they come up to it. It's on Sam's side, and Sam hops out and pokes at the pile for a moment. He picks something up, comes back to the car and flops down into his seat with a huff of discontentment, handing the thing to Dean.

It's the nonfunctional copy of the ivory-handled pistol.

"It's our pile of crappy weapons," Sam says.

Dean gives the pistol a long, uneasy, look and eventually tosses it on the seat between them, where it lands with a soft _thunk_. He gazes sourly at the pistol, and then at the "Carry On" cassette tape, which is still sitting on the floor from where Dean had tossed it earlier. The label on the cassette catches his eye again: _INFINITE LOOP._

"This IS a loop," says Dean, glaring unhappily at the road ahead. "I mean, not just a loop in time, and not just a song on a loop either — the road is a literal loop."

Sam's slumped down a little in his seat. "And if we've been all the way around the circuit now, well, I didn't see any other intersections. No other roads."

"Nope, me neither," said Dean. "And we were both looking." They're still stopped, Dean's foot still on the brake, the Impala's non-existent engine idling roughly. Dean's unsure what to do; it's awfully discouraging to realize they've finished the whole loop and haven't found anything new. After a moment he says, "It's seriously weird to think I've been driving this exact same circle of road over and over and over. Even before I picked you up at that bridge. And where the hell did the bridge go, anyway? The bridge where I picked you up? We never came back to it again. Come to think... where's the Roadhouse? I started out at the Roadhouse, talking with Bobby."

Sam frowns; Dean's filled him on the Bobby conversation while they've been driving. "Just Bobby, and nobody else, right?" Sam asks.

"Yep, I only saw Bobby. Nobody else in sight," says Dean. "The Roadhouse itself seemed deserted. I didn't actually go inside, though — just, didn't hear anybody. Don't know if there might've been somebody inside, but it all just kinda felt deserted. And then the second I saw the car I forgot everything else. And...so...where'd Bobby go? I was still hoping at least there was one more person here, one friend. Did they stick him back in lock-up? I know he had bad info — I mean, clearly Jack hasn't rebuilt Heaven, and, and, so, Cas didn't...didn't help. Or... maybe I just dreamed Bobby?"

It's unsettling to think that Bobby might have been only some sort of fever dream. Dean looks ahead to where the silent road bends around that same dark mountain yet again, the afternoon sun right back in its original place in the sky. How many times has he driven this fake-Impala around that same turn? He says, quietly, "I could've been driving this loop for a hundred years. A thousand. How long have we been up here?"

Sam lets out a slow, tired sigh. "No way to know. Well... let's try again, I guess? Maybe we missed something. Maybe the Axis Mundi won't look like a road. What else do we know about the Axis Mundi? I feel like Cas had a bit of other info. What did Cas say, do you remember?"

Dean's hands tighten on the steering wheel. The question seems oddly disquieting.

"What did...Cas... say?" he repeated slowly. His mind has snagged on the sound of the name _Cas_. One syllable, a C, an S... is it short for something?

_Cas._

Once again, Dean's forgotten who "Cas" is.

He fights down a twist of panic. This time, somehow he's aware that this is a name he's been periodically remembering and forgetting. Remembering, forgetting, and remembering again. It's happened before. He pins his hopes on that, thinking _It'll come to me. It'll come. He'll come back. He always comes back._ He closes his eyes, trying to focus, repeating "Cas..." quietly to himself, trying to remember the full name, the face, the person.

But it doesn't come immediately. Meanwhile, Sam's still going on about the Axis Mundi, saying, "What I mean is, back when we were in Heaven that time, I mean years ago, Cas showed up on this old tv set, right? In black and white, all staticky, do you remember? We could barely hear him. I feel like he said some other details...but... what did Cas say, exactly?"

_What did Cas say? What did Cas say?_

It's suddenly clear that this is a question that's been eating at Dean for some time, a question that's been constantly rattling around in the back of his head. It's not just about who Cas is. It's also about what he said. _What did Cas say?_ Something important was said. It's Cas who said it. It's Cas who said something important.

Cas's face hadn't been on a tv set, either. He hadn't been in black and white, and he hadn't been staticky. He'd been in full living color. Even now Dean can see his eyes. _Blue eyes_ , he thinks, yes, blue eyes indeed, blue eyes radiant as the very sky itself. Eyes like the sky.... And Cas had been standing right in front of him. Inches away. Cas had looked down at his bloody hand.

He'd looked down at his hand...

There's a sore, pulling sensation in Dean's mind, like something frozen is partially thawing, like a rusty door is slowly creaking halfway open. A few more elements come clear; a few more images. Blue eyes, yes, absolutely. The bloody hand. Cas is standing framed against a doorway and a brick wall. His hair is dark, yes, of course, dark hair; he's wearing a tan trenchcoat, yes, of course, _of course_ it's a tan trenchcoat, and there's a bit of white shirt visible, and an uneven blue tie that's been pulled a little loose at the neckline. There's a blood sigil on the wall behind him, fresh and dripping, clearly Cas's own blood, and it's lighting up, flaring bright orange when someone pounds on the door, and.... and....

And Cas looks sad. Resigned. Almost despairing. But then his eyes widen slightly; his head lifts, and his mouth parts slightly. He looks over at Dean, with an expression almost of hope. He's had an idea. Cas has suddenly gotten an idea, a solution....

... _a way to save Dean._

He starts to smile.

He starts talking. He's telling a long story. Dean can't remember the words; he's only seeing the image. At first Cas isn't even fully holding Dean's gaze, glancing away periodically, but as his story goes on, he's slowly turning to face Dean, and slowly stepping closer, and then he's looking _right at Dean_ , and his eyes are so bright that they're even glittering, shining—

For a perfect moment, Dean can see it all as vividly as if it's happening right before him: Castiel, outlined against the bricks, a bloody sigil on the door behind him, stepping closer, saying something, _saying something_ , and oh, _that look_ in Cas's eyes as he pauses and says—

Something.

It's something short. Just a few words. He's smiling; he's crying; and Dean's heart is on fire now, and Dean's crying too.

_What did Cas say?_

_What did Cas say?_

* * *

"Dean!" Sam yells. He's shaking Dean's shoulder, worry sharp in his voice. Dean blinks; his foot's slipped off the brake, he's hunched over the steering wheel, and the car's slewed a little crookedly across the road, like it'd started moving again and had been about to veer off into the roadside ditch. Sam's got one leg stretched out across Dean's — seems he's had to slam his own foot on the brake. He's also got one hand on the wheel, it turns out, and with his other hand he's shaking Dean's shoulder, hard. There's a bite of fear in Sam's voice as he says, for what seems like maybe the third or fourth time, "DEAN! Snap out of it!"

"Cas _said_ something!" Dean bursts out. He realizes he's been holding his breath; his hands are gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his fingers are aching. He forces himself to straighten up and take a breath, saying, "It's okay. I'm okay. Sorry. I just... I forgot Cas again. And then I got some of it back. But only some, _dammit—_ "

Sam relaxes by inches, letting out a shaky breath. He reaches for the keys and cuts the engine, then finally takes his foot off the brake and shuffles back to his usual spot — though still watching Dean narrowly. "Not sure we'd actually die if the car crashed," Sam says, "But I didn't want to experiment. You were just...like, totally checked out, Dean."

"Sorry," says Dean again, who's still rattled from the vivid Castiel memory. His heart's still pounding, and when he tries to relax his fingers from the steering wheel, he discovers his hands are trembling. He has to close both hands tight on the steering wheel again just to try to hide the shakiness from Sam. "I don't know what that was," he says. "A memory flash again. Almost remembered something about Cas." He turns to Sam and can't keep an edge of desperation out of his voice as he adds, "He _said_ something to me and I can't remember it! It was something important!"

"Look, we're both operating at half capacity here, and we know it," says Sam. "It's okay. Anyway, I remembered what Cas said. He said, the Axis Mundi might look like two-lane asphalt for us sometimes, but it can look different than that to some people—"

" _It wasn't about the Axis Mundi!"_ Dean says, nearly shouting now.

"Okay, okay," says Sam, now raising both hands up. "Okay. I think maybe you're thinking about, um, something else. Some other Cas memory? But right _now_ , try to focus on what he said about the Axis Mundi. _Axis Mundi_ , Dean, focus, we gotta focus on getting out of here. What I was getting at was, he said it might not look like a road. So - let's drive around again and look at everything else - the grass, the patterns in the clouds, the light, everything. Even if it doesn't really seem like a road."

 _That's not what Cas said_ , Dean thinks. _That was a different time._ But he swallows, nods, takes a breath, and shifts his foot to the gas. "Right. Right..." he manages to say. "Clouds, leaves, look at everything. Right. Let's do another pass. You study the right side of the road and I'll take the left."

"You sure you're okay to drive?"

"That was a fluke," says Dean.

"If you're forgetting things again, maybe I could dr--"

"I'M FINE," says Dean. "I don't know why I forgot him again, but I got the name back again now, at least." And he does: now that Sam has said "Cas" a couple times, it's securely back in Dean's head.

A thought strikes Dean then, and he asks, "Oh, what's your girl's name?"

Sam goes quiet. His mouth actually drops open a little; then he looks down, staring at his knees, lost in thought. He closes his eyes, frowning.

"Just like when we were in the woods," Dean mutters. "The woods all over again."

"I can't _remember_ ," Sam bursts out, and it's clear he's still having trouble remembering. Which, Dean is freshly aware, is a _terrible_ sensation.

"Eileen," Dean informs him. "Hunter. Long brown hair. Brown eyes. Great smile, you said." Sam's eyes are squeezed shut now, and Dean tries to add all the other essential details: "You resurrected her from the dead. Brought her back from Hell. You've been dating for a bit. She's deaf. Great at lip-reading. You've been learning sign language."

Sam finally opens his eyes, with a quiet nod. He, too, now looks very shaken. After a moment he swallows and says, "I think I got her back now. And is Cas back for you?"

Dean gives him a curt nod back. "Blue eyes. Dark hair. Angel. Knows blood sigils. So..." He tries to think. "What the hell just happened? Did we both, like, reset or something? That was just like when we were in the trees."

"Yeah, it hit us at about the same time again, too. And we forgot the exact same two people again." Sam pauses, muttering, "I wonder why it's Cas for you...."

Once again Dean finds that he wants to skip past that question for now (it still feels potentially dangerous, like there's something painful hidden there), so he says in a rush, "Dunno, but, at least we got them back. So, what have we learned? Um...we know now we can re-forget. We do pretty well at starting to remember a bunch of stuff but then we both get re-wiped. At the same time. Maybe it happens, like, every hour or something?" Sam's quiet, and Dean suggests, a little at a loss, "Well... let's keep doing the memory checks, and let's try another loop. Studying everything else this time. Clouds, birds, everything."

They begin their next circuit of the road, both a little quiet now. Dean's trying hard to focus on the trees and the clouds and the birds, and even the patterns in the dirt; he's trying, he's really trying, to find some kind of pattern that might be the Axis Mundi. But all the while he can't help thinking:

_What could make an angel smile and cry at the same time?_

* * *

They drive the loop a full second time around, scrutinizing everything in sight. But there's still no other road, no branches, no pathways, not even a hint of any interesting kind of "pattern" anywhere. And the road still never goes anywhere else.

No answer emerges; no more memories come clear. And as they're approaching the big dark forested mountain again, Cas's name once again flits out of Dean's head. This time, Dean recognizes the symptoms. There's almost a hitch when it happens, like a hiccup, like he's fallen asleep for just a fleeting microsecond. This time, he knows right away that he's lost something.

"It just happened again," Dean says, braking the car to a halt once again and turning to Sam, only to find that Sam's turning to him too.

"It just happened again _to me too_ ," Sam reported. "I can... sort of feel it. This awareness that something just got erased again."

"Same," says Dean grimly. "Exact same."

"Fuck, it's hitting us at the same _time_ , isn't it? You forget Cas—"

" _Cas_ ," Dean repeats, relieved all over again to hear the name again. "Cas, Cas. Blue eyes, right?"

"Yep," Sam confirms, with a quick nod. "You forget Cas each time, and I forget... I forget...." He goes silent, his mouth working like he's still trying to say something.

"Eileen," Dean supplies.

"EILEEN. Yes. _Dammit_. Eileen. You forget Cas and I forget Eileen. At the same time."

"More than the same time," Dean says, scowling around at the landscape. The dark forested mountain in front, the curve of the road -- "It's the _same place!_ See that mountain? And look, up ahead, there's our pile of sucky weapons again! Which is where we walked into the trees, which is where we _also_ had a moment of forgetting everything! Every time we come around to this part of the road we kinda, we reset. We get wiped again. I wonder if...." He pauses, thinking. "You know, I kinda think this was the beginning of the road right when I left the Roadhouse. Never seen the damn Roadhouse since, but that curve up ahead, it was the first curve after I left the Roadhouse."

Sam's quiet a moment, and then he says, "I think it was the first curve we saw after the bridge, too. Like...maybe this is the point we each got popped into the loop? Roadhouse for you, bridge for me? And then we were... popped to here? To this part of the road, specifically? This is where we started the loop."

"The starting point," agrees Dean. "And... maybe that's when our memories got wiped. Or, re-wiped, anyway. Like it's still trying to do that to us each time we come around near the starting point. Re-wiping us once each time around. To try to keep us in the trance, I bet. But we're starting to hold onto the memories a bit better. Maybe only because we keep reminding each other."

"But where's the place where we actually _entered_ the loop?" said Sam. "If it's right around here... shouldn't we be able to see it?"

They look at each other for a moment.

"Maybe it's _right here_ ," says Sam. He's twisting around in his seat now, looking left and right. "Let's look around. It's got to be somewhere. Maybe we should get out and walk around again."

"I am not gonna go just wander around through copy-and-pasted trees again playing lumberjack," says Dean. "That just didn't help at all. And I don't know that driving this damn loop a third time is gonna help, either."

Sam has gone very still. In a low voice he says "Not to jinx us, Dean, but, we might not have to go around the loop again. Look. Look _behind._ " He's ended up twisted fully around in his seat now, and he's looking directly behind them.

Dean looks in the rearview mirror, but sees nothing interesting. He grabs the mirror with one hand and tilts it a bit left and right, peering into it, trying to get a clearer view, but it only shows the familiar paved road stretching out behind them and disappearing in the distance, with a seamless wall of trees on either side. "I don't see anything," he reports.

"What?" says Sam. "Really?" He turns around to face front and studies the rearview mirror himself, and then twists around again to look behind him. "Turn around and look through the rear window," he finally says. "Don't use the mirror."

Dean cranes around to look.

There behind them, plainly visible through the Impala's rear window, is a second road, joining the main road in a perfectly obvious Y-intersection. An unpaved dirt road, clear as day, heading off into the trees at an angle.

Dean checks the mirror again; only one road. He twists around behind; two roads, the familiar paved one and the new dirt road.

"Are you seriously telling me we just had to _look behind us?"_ Dean says. "Illusion. Goddam _illusion_. A glimpse beyond this FUCKING ILLUSION! He's hiding the junction from us. We can't see it when facing forwards. Fuck this. Fuck Chuck, fuck this illusion, and fuck this stupid LOOP—" He's already firing up the Impala's engine again, and then flinging the Impala into reverse. Sam doesn't say a word, just faces front again and braces himself with one arm planted on the dash, like he's already guessed what Dean's gonna do. And what Dean does is rev the Impala straight backwards, in reverse, toward the dirt road, build up a bit of momentum, and then pull the Impala around in a rough J-turn. Its tires squeal on the asphalt as the car careens around. He's trying to keep the new road — the little dirt road that's heading off into the trees — in view as the car whips around, looking right at it the whole time. Yet weirdly the new road actually vanishes from view _during_ the spin, replaced by a wall of trees that seem hazy at first, then firmer once the car's pointed directly at them. But Dean doesn't hesitate; he keeps his eye fixed on the place where the dirt road had been, and the moment the Impala's facing forward he slams the transmission lever into Drive and guns the car hard. The Impala leaps ahead, now headed off the road at a diagonal, pointed directly at the little patch of trees that had appeared from nowhere.

The trees loom at them, huge and solid. "This better work," he mutters, and he hears Sam say softly, "Fuck, this is _not my Heaven."_ The trees seem to hurtle at the windshield. At the last second Dean thinks _Maybe this was a bad idea_ , and he can't help cringing down over the steering wheel, hoping he hasn't just killed them both—

Dean's ears pop, the trees vanish like mist, and they're charging smoothly forward _on the new dirt road._

Sam whoops; Dean lets out an actual "YEE-HAW!", thrilled to have made some actual progress. Dean finds he doesn't want to slow down now, in case the trees might reappear, so they rattle noisily along the dirt road at quite a clip, the Impala jouncing roughly, a huge plume of dust lifting up behind them. A patch of brightness seems to be approaching ahead; it's a gap in the trees. A big gap.

Suddenly they're out of the trees entirely, and zipping over a very familiar-looking concrete bridge that crosses a little rocky river.

"Your bridge!" Dean yells. "We found your bridge!" Sam whoops again, and they keep right on going. They zoom right past the spot where he and Sam had had their little reunion, flying past the place where they'd heard Amara and Chuck arguing. Then they're over the bridge, the Impala shuddering as they hit another stretch of dirt road, and ahead—

"The Roadhouse!" they both yell, simultaneously. About a hundred feet ahead is the Roadhouse itself. It feels positively triumphant just to see its weathered wooden siding and its familiar old sign.

Dean slews the car to a dramatic dusty stop in the Roadhouse's little unpaved parking lot. Bobby seems to be nowhere in sight, but other than that it looks just like it had when Dean had first arrived. There's the little porch with a couple of chairs, a beer cooler, and even a bottle sitting out that looks like it's probably the beer that Bobby had handed him.

"I'm not sure this is the Axis Mundi," Dean says, as he cuts the ignition. "Might still just be in our same Heaven, just off on a spur road that we originally started on. But man, I've never been so pleased to end up right back where I started!"

"Two steps forward, one step back?" replies Sam, with a grin.

"More like one step forward, three steps back," says Dean. "And also, I'll warn you, the beer sucks here. But let's check it out. Maybe we can find Bobby again." As they both climb out of the car, he gives the Roadhouse an appraising look. "Or Jo, or Ash. Or, y'know, _Cas_ , Cas would be good—"

But then he freezes, one step out of the car, his hand still on the car door, for he's just remembered once again — very clearly, this time — that Cas is gone.

The memory resets seem to have stopped. A lot of memories are still missing — Dean can feel that there's still some huge holes — but the few Cas memories that he's managed to periodically recover, during the last couple circuits around the loop, at last seem to all be staying put. He remembers Cas's full name clearly now — _Castiel_ — and he's certain now that Cas has for years been his best friend, and he remembers, too, that Cas is an angel. He remembers the blue of Cas's eyes, the tan trenchcoat, the blue tie. He can even still see that mysterious, haunting image of Cas standing in the brick room near the bloody sigil, starting to say something, starting to turn toward Dean. The rest of that particular memory is still unclear; but one thing that has become terribly clear once again is that Castiel is gone.

Castiel is dead.

An all-too-familiar heaviness settles into Dean's heart.

Sam's quiet, standing still, watching Dean from across the Impala roof.

"Well... not Cas, probably," Dean finally manages to say, around a sudden lump in his throat. "Bobby said Cas helped Jack fix up Heaven... but we know that was all wrong, right? Heaven's not fixed up, and Jack's stuck on Earth, and Cas..." He can't quite say it. "He's... gone."

Sam finally says, "He's probably, um, in the Empty, huh."

Dean nods, slowly. He has to force himself to close the car door, and then can't seem to start walking; instead he puts one hand on the Impala's roof and just leans there for a moment. He forces himself to give Sam a wan smile. "At least Eileen's probably okay, right? Jack said... he said he thinks he brought all the people back. We'll make sure she's okay. We'll make sure. But, Cas...." He trails off for a moment. "He's not... not human, of course, so, probably... still in the Empty, huh."

Sam's still watching him. And after a moment Sam volunteers, "He's come back from there before, you know."

"He has?" says Dean, with a sharp look over at Sam. "I don't...I don't remember that."

"Oh, man," says Sam, with a little laugh. "Yeah, he's come back from the craziest things. And he's come back from the Empty before. Definitely. Full-on resurrection. Brand new vessel and everything."

Dean's quiet a long moment, taking that in.

"Also, Jack came back from there once too, you know," says Sam. "So did Lucifer. Cas came back _twice_ , actually. Look, we don't know what the whole situation is right now. But what we do know for sure is, the Empty's not necessarily permanent."

Sam falls quiet after that; he's just watching Dean. But there's a question in his eyes, and eventually Dean gives him a slow nod. And Sam nods back.

Just like that they've agreed.

They don't say it yet. Dean doesn't say it out loud, doesn't say, _I'm gonna bring him back again; we'll find a way to get him out of the Empty; we'll get him back._ It seems absurd to be planning that far ahead. How can they bring Cas back if they can't even find their way out of Heaven? When they don't even have their own memories sorted out? How can Dean try to bring back an angel that he doesn't even fully remember, from a place he has no idea how to get to?

But nonetheless a little spark of hope has flared up deep in Dean's heart, and though the spark may be small, it's bright, and it's warm.

Dean finds he can draw a long, slow breath again.

At last he manages to say, "Let's just see if we can find some answers, at least." Sam grins at him, and the two of them turn away from the Impala and walk forward, side by side, through the dusty parking lot to the Roadhouse.

* * *

_A/N - Next chapter will post tomorrow. I hope you're enjoying this story; if you are, please drop a comment! I love to hear from you!_


	6. The Roadhouse

* * *

Dean hesitates when he reaches the Roadhouse porch, glancing over at where Bobby had been. Bobby's definitely nowhere to be seen, but his chair's still there. As is Dean's chair. And there's the little beer cooler (which, it's now clear, is none other than the green cooler again — an exact duplicate of the other green cooler that's already sitting in the back of the Impala). And there's not just one open bottle sitting on the little porch table, he sees now, but two. His and Bobby's.

"I guess I didn't totally imagine Bobby?" says Dean, pointing at the second bottle. "Unless I opened two bottles by myself."

Sam watches while Dean touches Bobby's beer bottle gently, with two fingers. Dean raises an eyebrow, glancing back at Sam. "Still cold," Dean reports. "Maybe it stays cold forever?" Cautiously, he checks the other bottle, the one he'd drunk from before. This one's cold too. He picks it up and sniffs the open top tentatively — the liquid inside smells like normal beer, at least — and takes an experimental swig. "Ugh. Still cold, but still crap too."

Sam's now looking into the beer cooler. He pulls out a third bottle, inspecting the label. "El Sol? El Sol's cheap, sure, but not crap exactly."

"Taste it," Dean suggests.

Sam twists off the cap of the third bottle and takes a big swallow, then nearly chokes and spits most of it out. Dean busts out laughing. Sam stares at the beer bottle in his hands again, turning it to re-check the label. "What gives? El Sol's not _that_ bad."

"I think it was supposed to replicate the taste of the the first beer I ever had," Dean explains, sniffing his own beer again. "Or in other words, the beer Dad used to drink when we were motel-hopping back in the 90's, living on about six bucks a day. Dad just threw me this beer one night when were on a swing through New England, remember?" Sam gives a slightly sad chuckle, shaking his head at the memory, as Dean says, "Think it was North Shore Lite or some shit. Three-fifty a six-pack if I remember right."

Sam rolls his eyes. "I can't believe they put terrible beer in your Heaven. _Our_ Heaven."

"I think the idea was that it would remind me of Dad," Dean says. "A nostalgia moment, I guess." He looks around, remembering Bobby dropping the fact that Mom and Dad were supposedly somewhere nearby. "There seemed to be a bit of a Mom and Dad theme, actually. Like, your mom and dad live together right over there, here's your dad's beer, wallow in the family memories."

Sam frowns. Setting his beer bottle down on the little table, he says, "Last time we were up in Heaven — I mean, our _real_ Heavens — as far as I remember, literally _all_ our favorite memories either didn't have Dad at all, or were about Dad having been....well, c'mon, let's face it, not the all-time best father figure."

Dean looks at him, thinking back on the first Heaven visit they'd had, a decade ago. (Or, the first visit they could remember, at least — according to Ash, there've been other Heaven visits that neither brother has any memory of.) It'd stung, back then, to discover that Sam's favorite memories had been about being _away_ from family. But that had been the reality, hadn't it? "I guess you're right," he can admit now, to Sam. "My favorite childhood memory apparently included that bit where Mom actually kicked him out! And yours was about, what was it, finally getting literally your first real Thanksgiving dinner _with another family._ Think I remember you pointing out, all your Thanksgivings with Dad had involved him passed out on the couch?"

Sam lets out a very small huff of a laugh. "With a bucket of fast food for us, instead of a turkey."

"And a six-pack of primo North Shore Lite for Dad," Dean say glumly, holding up the beer bottle.

"If we're being honest here... more than one six-pack," Sam points out. Dean gives him a sharp glance, and Sam shrugs and adds, "Don't get me wrong — I understand him better now. I know now he did try to protect us. And it meant the world to get to see him again, recently, it really did. Chuck screwed up his life just like he screwed up ours. He probably did the best he could. " Sam stuffs his hands in his pockets, gazing down at the two El Sol bottles on the little table. "But, just the same...." He pauses.

"...but just the same, sucky beers and Motel-6 Thanksgivings aren't really on the top-ten best-memories list?" Dean finishes for him.

Sam shrugs, with a little nod. Dean walks to the corner of the porch, steps off onto the grass, holds his arm out and upends his own beer bottle completely, letting all the remaining beer drain out onto the ground. "I still love Dad," Dean declares, as Sam comes over to join him on the grass, "and I forgave him a shitload of stuff a while ago, and you're right, Chuck played Dad just like he played us. But, yeah, I see your point, it was maybe _not_ actually the super awesome dream childhood like I wanted to believe. Took me a long time to admit that to myself. And..." He shakes the last drops out of the bottle. "...bad beer is bad beer!" With that he winds up his arm and pitches the bottle into the trees, off at an angle, toward the back of the Roadhouse. They both watch as it flies through the air.

In mid-air, just as the bottle passes behind the Roadhouse, it smoothly vanishes without a single sound.

Dean blinks, wondering if he's just lost sight of it. But there's no distant crashing noise of it landing, not even a soft _thud_ ; the bottle simply disappears, and the only sounds are still the ever-present birdsongs and the soft rustlings of aspen leaves in the breeze. Dean shakes his head, unnerved again.

"Did it... just..." says Sam, squinting a little as he stares at the spot where it vanished.

"Disappear?" says Dean. "Yeah." It's another sharp reminder that they're truly not on Earth. "Well," he says after a moment, "let's check out the inside. See if anybody's here. Maybe Ash at least might be around. Remember how he'd found a way to sneak around between Heavens? He made us a short-cut, didn't he?"

"Yeah, he had a sigil that he drew on a door, back when Zachariah was after us, that first time we were here," says Sam. "Popped us straight to the Garden."

"And by the way... " says Dean, as they turn and walk back up onto the porch, "That wasn't the first time we were here. Remember how Ash said we'd been here before. A bunch of times."

"Oh, jeez, you're right," says Sam, shaking his head. "I knew that. I've thought about that a few times since, actually. 'Cause really, it means Chuck can — oh!" He stops short in surprise, a few feet from the front door, and looks at Dean. "Chuck can erase memories! Can erase _specific_ memories. I mean, _we already knew that._ We knew he could do that! _He's already done that to us_! A lot of times before, apparently."

Dean nods. "And we knew angels can do that, too. And have it done _to_ them, also. So... guess we really shouldn't be surprised by now at these memory games." He takes a deep breath. "But we can get it all back." _Or, we better be able to_ , he thinks. _Cause this is driving me nuts._ He takes one more step and sets a hand on the handle of the Roadhouse's screen door. "Well, here goes nothing. Ash and his magic sigil, or bust."

* * *

He pulls the screen door open and peers inside cautiously.

At first all he sees is a narrow patch of wooden floor littered with some bits of straw. "Anybody home?" he calls. His voice seems to echo, as if the Roadhouse is bigger than he's expecting. "Jo? Ellen? Ash?" There's no reply. It's completely silent. "Um... Bobby?"

His voice rings in the quiet. Nobody answers. It seems very dark inside; Dean can't see much beyond the bit of wooden floor and the pieces of straw.

"Wish I had my gun," Dean whispers to Sam. "I mean, my real gun."

"Probably can't kill anybody up here anyway," Sam whispers back.

Dean considers that and gives a curt nod of acknowledgement; Sam's probably right. "Might as well go for it then," he whispers back, "cause I'm hoping we can't be killed either." With that he swings the door all the way open and steps inside, Sam just behind him. Dean announces loudly, "Guess what, we got out of the loop!", takes two more steps, and stops dead in surprise. Sam has to push around him to get a view.

It's not the Roadhouse.

At first Dean only sees part of it; the entrance is a narrow wooden walkway with chest-high paneling on both sides that seems almost like a horse stall. Beyond that is a wider open area. The lighting's _very_ dim, and Dean blinks as his eyes adjust. The sun really ought to be shining in, for there's a couple windows and even a lot of gaps in the walls, but, weirdly, it now seems to be night-time outside, not daytime, for the windows look totally dark. The only light's coming from a big open area just ahead, where a couple of bare light bulbs shine weakly from cobwebby fixtures suspended high overhead.

The hair's rising on the back of Dean's neck. Something's awfully familiar about this place, and not in a good way.

Cautiously, Dean walks partway through the horse-stall-like entrance area, Sam close beside him. Beyond the horse-stall area, the building seems to have been totally gutted on the inside. There's no chairs or tables, and not even a bar - it's just a big, empty wooden shell. Oddly, it seems a lot bigger on the inside than it had on the outside.

Wait; this little entrance path isn't just _like_ a horse stall; it _is_ a horse stall. This is a horse stall inside a barn.

It's a barn.

Dean takes another cautious step forward, moving into the wide barn aisle.

It's an abandoned barn, dusty, a few empty stalls here and there on the sides. There's a double door on one side, and a little wooden stairway leading up to a hay loft. There's a few bales of straw stacked in a corner, and some little crates and what looks like an ancient vintage milk jug, but other than that it's empty.

"Hey," says Sam, "Isn't this that barn where we had that fight with Alistair and Uriel? Over Anna, remember? And— wait, Cas was there, right?"

Dean tries to remember. It starts coming back to him, fuzzily. Cas hadn't been on their side yet, had he? There's a small door off to the side that seems familiar, a door and a little window, and Dean studies it; hadn't Cas come walking in that door? With Uriel. Cas had still been on the side of the angels. Then there'd been some kind of a fight, which had somehow wound up with Cas sprawled flat on his back, and Alistair trying to force Cas out of his vessel.

Dean stares almost sightlessly at the little door, trying to bring the elusive memory into focus. Castiel sprawled helpless on the floor... in Alistair's grasp....and Alistair had been chanting something, clearly about to do something nasty to Cas. And Dean, well, Dean had quite suddenly realized....

Well, suddenly he'd realized he didn't want to see Cas killed. Or de-vesseled, or whatever it was Alistair had been about to do.

"I saved Cas, didn't I?" Dean says, still unable to retrieve some of the details. "Did I?"

"Yup," says Sam. "Clocked Alistair right in the face with a crowbar." He glances at Dean with an eyebrow raised. "Now that I think about it, maybe that was the beginning."

"Beginning of what?"

Sam doesn't answer, just gives a quiet little laugh. "Might be better if you remember on your own," he just says, very unhelpfully.

Dean's about to ask what he means when they take a few more steps into the wide aisle, at which point Dean finally notices that there's a huge dark stain on the wooden floor. Beside him, Sam sucks in his breath in a sharp inhale and freezes still. Dean's puzzled; he looks around, and there on a post, right next to him, just two feet away, is a sharpened metal spike at least a foot long. It's sticking straight out of a post, into the main aisle. It's about five feet off the ground, slanted upwards, it looks deadly sharp, and it's stained dark, just the same color as the stain on the floorboards below it.

Dean's blood seems to turn to ice.

" _Dean!"_ says Sam. Before Dean can even react, Sam's got both arms around him and he's hauling hard, yanking Dean bodily backwards, then jumping in front of him and shoving him all the back through the horse stall to the outer Roadhouse door. "Out, OUT!" Sam's saying. In a single second Sam manages to force Dean all the way back outside, so roughly that Dean loses his footing on the porch and falls sprawling to the dusty parking lot. The Roadhouse's little screen door slams shut behind them as Sam scrambles off the porch too. Dean's gasping in shock; Sam pulls Dean to his feet by one arm, keeping himself positioned between Dean and the Roadhouse, his expression grim.

"That's _not the Roadhouse!_ " Dean finally manages to say. "That hook, Sam, that, that thing on the post, that spike, _did you see it?"_

"I saw," says Sam. His voice is actually shaky. "It's rebar. I saw."

"That's the barn _where I died!"_ Dean bursts out. "That's THE barn! What the—" He almost can't breathe, still gulping in air in rough gasps. The sight of that awful sharp spike seems to be seared into his mind now; it's all he can see. " _That's how I died!"_

"I remember," Sam says grimly. "I had to... I had to pull you off that thing, after... Anyway, I am _not_ letting you back in there."

"I thought that was Cas's barn!" Dean says. "Anna's barn! But it's the barn where... where I _died_!"

"I'm thinking it's both," says Sam, looking back toward the barn now with a dark look. He's still got a firm grip on Dean's upper arm, like he's not willing to let Dean out of his sight.

"Who the hell puts _sharpened spikes of rebar on a barn wall?_ " Dean says. The adrenaline's still surging, but as he gets his breath back he starts to realize that something's really odd about the spike. "Barns are for, like... horses! Cows! Animals! There's straw bales in there, stalls, that's a barn for animals! Who the hell peppers a horse barn with _lethal pointed spears?_ "

"Yeah, I went through all that," says Sam. "After you died. I thought about that a ton." He finally releases Dean, and drags a sleeve roughly across his eyes. "All I could think was, maybe the barn owners...needed a hook?" He sounds unconvinced even as he adds, "For...like...I don't know...tying horses to?"

"You don't tie horses to _pointed spears!"_ says Dean.

"Maybe they needed a hook for something else?"

" _It wasn't a hook!"_ Dean yells. " _It was a spear! It was a freakin' JAVELIN!_ " The initial shock seems to be changing to fury. "Sam, that was, that was a _deliberately sharpened_ piece of rebar!"

"I know," says Sam.

"You'd need an _angle grinder_ to sharpen it like that! Rebar doesn't come sharp like that! You'd have to sharpen it on purpose!"

"I know," says Sam again.

"And, and, why even DO that? You can just go BUY A BARN HOOK THAT'S NOT A STABBY SPIKE!" says Dean, who's now standing in the parking lot yelling at top volume, waving his arms at the Roadhouse — or, rather, at the barn that seems to be disguised on the outside as a Roadhouse. And the more Dean thinks about it, the more insane the rebar spike becomes. Because— "They SELL HOOKS, Y'KNOW! At freaking' Home Depot!" Dean yells. "They sell perfectly good hooks, for, for like THREE-FIFTY! It's CHEAPER THAN REBAR! A PIECE OF REBAR'S TWELVE DOLLARS! And, and YOU'D HAVE TO WELD IT ONTO A BACKPLATE! It's CHEAPER, and EASIER, to get normal hooks that AREN'T stabby spikes, that WON'T KILL HORSES! Or, or, COWS! Or, y'know, ME!"

"Yeah. I know," says Sam. He's looking a little calmer now. He runs a hand through his hair, still staring at the Roadhouse. He says, thoughtfully, "It's because Chuck made this, not a farmer. It's not a real barn. I should've realized."

"But, WHY IS IT HERE?" Dean yells. He's running out of steam now, and realizes, as he drops his arms to his sides, that more than anything, he's simply confused. It just doesn't make sense. "Why is this barn even _here_? Is dying supposed to be a good memory for me? Why does it look like that barn where we were with Cas and Anna? I mean, it's the _same barn_ , isn't it? Why are _my bloodstains_ all over the floor — that's... that's _my blood_ , there, isn't it? Is bleeding to death supposed to be a good memory for me? Just...why is it here _in my Heaven_?"

Sam's put his hands on his hips now. He's backing up to study the Roadhouse from a bit farther away, looking at it with his head cocked a little. Then he takes a few steps to the side to peer around the corner of the building, toward where the beer bottle had disappeared. Dean just watches him, too confused (and still too shocked from the awful memory of dying on the spike) to even ask what Sam's doing.

Sam turns back to Dean and asks, "Where'd you first show up?"

"What?" Dean has to struggle to shift gears.

"When you woke up here in Heaven, where were you exactly?"

Dean points to the side of Roadhouse, just beyond where Sam's standing now, beyond where Bobby had been sitting. "Um... just around that corner, I think? Right about where I was when I threw the beer bottle, I guess. I was just...choking on blood, in the, in the barn, you know, and then next thing I knew I was just standing there. Right there. Right around the corner."

Sam gives Dean a long look, and then he turns and starts walking around the corner. Baffled, Dean trots after him.

* * *

Together they round the corner to the side of the Roadhouse building. It still looks much smaller on the outside than the barn had been on the inside. It's still quite peaceful on the outside, too; or, it should seem peaceful (the birds are still singing in the distance, the aspens still doing their endless rustling-softly-in-the-breeze act). But Dean still feels nearly nauseated by the memory of that spike ripping right through him to the core, and nothing here really seems peaceful at all anymore.

"Okay... so, I think I woke up right around here," Dean says, gesturing around vaguely at the grass. Sam nods, but he's looking at the wall of the building.

There's a little door there. With a window next to it.

Tentatively, they both peer inside.

The window looks right into the barn. Inside they can see the dim interior — which, weirdly, still seems much larger than it should be, and also is totally un-illuminated by the sunlight that's streaming all around them through the window.

"This is the door where Cas and Uriel came in," says Dean. "I don't get it."

They exchange a look. Sam points around the next corner, with a questioning look, and Dean nods.

Together they creep forwards toward the next corner, toward the back of the Roadhouse. They take one step, two, three; they both peer around the corner and see only a quiet, sunlit backyard.

"I don't know what I'm even expecting," says Dean, and he takes another step forward, Sam right by his side, and suddenly it's night.

They both stop short, almost blinded for a moment before their eyes adjust. Dean looks around, blinking. The sky's dark; there are stars overhead. A crescent moon is hanging low in one side of the sky. The birdsongs have stopped and instead there's night-time noises — the drone of crickets, an owl hooting in the distance.

Ahead of them, on a wide patch of gravel, something's glinting in the moonlight. As Dean's eyes adjust, the glints resolve into the pieces of a broken beer bottle.

And beside them is not the small square Roadhouse building, but a full-size wooden barn.

"It's...the barn," Dean says, utterly baffled. "It's the creepy barn in Ohio. The Wes Craven barn. Where I died. This is where we pulled up in the car, right? I mean, in the real car. Baby." He looks around at the moonlit scene. "It's the _night_ _I died_. All over again."

"It makes sense," says Sam.

"It does _not_ make sense," Dean objects. "NOTHING makes sense. And this is _not_ a good memory."

"I don't think it's a memory at all," said Sam. He has an odd look on his face. "And I don't think it was the real car, that night. I think it was the fake one. C'mon," he says, pointing behind them — back toward the corner of the barn that they've just come around. "Let's see if we can go back the other way."

They turn together and go back the direction they'd come, taking a couple steps around the corner — and it's abruptly daytime again, the green forested mountain visible in the distance, the aspens rustling in the breeze, the birds singing, and what they're standing next to is not a huge ramshackle barn at all, but the little weathered Roadhouse building.

The brothers exchange a somber look. Dean nods toward the back of the building and once again they walk around the corner. This time Dean tries to take the last step very slowly, wondering if he'll maybe see some sort of half-and-half view, daytime in part of the sky and night in the other part. But the transition's instantaneous; suddenly it seems to be night all over, the entire sky dark and speckled with stars, the crescent moon shining silver, and there's the cricket noises, and the owl hooting, and the broken bottle glinting on the gravel parking area, and the huge dark barn looming next to them.

"We're still in the same Heaven," Sam concludes. "This isn't an Axis Mundi transition, because I'm pretty sure beer bottles can't travel the Axis Mundi. This is just like that sun-jumping-around thing. The loop road had areas of different times, right? This whole Heaven that we're in right now, it has daytime areas, sunset areas, night-time areas. So, this is one of the night-time areas. And...there's multiple ways into the barn, right? Front door, side door, and around here by the back. The barn's really here, in this Heaven, just kinda... stuffed into a smaller building somehow. And, I'm thinking this isn't a memory at all. I'm kinda thinking that this is where it actually happened." He looks over at Dean, his face very grim in the moonlight. "It's where you actually died. Or rather... where you _thought_ you died. Where _I_ thought you died. But we were both really here all along."

Dean stares at him.

And slowly he gets it. "We were just on a stage set?" he says, almost in a whisper.

"When you died, yeah," Sam says, nodding. "I think the Cas-and-Anna barn was real. That one's a real barn down on Earth. This barn where you died, though, was never a real barn on Earth, and it sure wasn't in Ohio. It's a replica of the other barn, and it's right here—" (Sam points to the huge barn next to them) "— and it's in this weird Heaven we're stuck in."

"So Chuck just... re-used that old barn, the one he must've seen us in years ago? For a stage set? Do you mean... I died _up here_? Like, literally right here?"

Sam looks very somber. He says, "Dean, think about it. That whole day was weird. C'mon, a _pie festival_? An old hunt of Dad's? We've read Dad's journal front to back a million times and I have never seen that page with that weird mask drawing. Also, vampires wearing _masks_?"

"Vamp-mimes...." says Dean, a little weakly.

Sam rolls his eyes. "Okay, let's get something straight here, _mimes don't even wear masks_. They have white make-up. That's different." He pauses and says, "Your jokes are usually a _little_ better than that, and, you know what — now I'm thinking, maybe that wasn't even _your_ joke. Another thing is, it doesn't make sense for vamps to wear masks anyway, because, y'know, their weapons _are their teeth_! Why are they gonna block their teeth? It just doesn't make sense. Suddenly we're working an old hunt of Dad's, with vamps who hide their teeth? Suddenly we're in a barn _that we've been in before_ , a barn we both should have pretty strong memories of — I mean, c'mon, that was a major day for us, Ruby getting tortured, you saying goodbye to Anna, you rescuing Cas, our first ever epic demon-and-angel battle — and we don't even _recognize_ it? And suddenly the barn is studded with rebar spikes, when no sane barn owner would _ever_ put lethal spikes like that around their animals? A random vamp we haven't seen in _fifteen years_ is suddenly back? The whole thing seems like a set-up, doesn't it?"

Dean lets out a slow breath, thinking. "A set-up for..."

"A set-up for a death scene," Sam says, very quietly.

They're both silent a moment.

Dean walks over to the barn, opens the door, and walks right inside. Sam hustles to join him, saying anxiously, "Wait, hold up, I don't want you in here! I don't think there's still vamps around, but that night _really sucked_ , Dean, and it is _not_ a good memory for me either."

"I agree a hundred percent on that," says Dean. "I just wanna see something." He walks into the main barn aisle, gazing around. There's the bloody rebar spike, and another unbloodied spike on a post farther away. Dean gives the bloody one a scowl. It still makes him a little sick to see it, but the initial shakiness has long since turned to anger — and, now, a desire to figure it all out.

He backs away and starts looking around at the barn. He looks in one direction, and recognizes where the vamps had come from. He turns and looks the other direction, toward the little door with a window, and now he clearly remembers that door blowing open, with that flag-snapping sound of wings in the air — and then Castiel striding in dramatically, Uriel close behind him.

He looks at the big double doors that he and Sam have just walked in. They'd come in through those same doors on the vamp hunt, on the night he'd died. And, he's now certain, those are the very same double doors where Alistair and a weakened Ruby had appeared, twelve years ago.

"It's definitely the same damn barn," Dean murmurs, standing in the center and turning in a circle, taking it all in. "So...it's just a copy-and-pasted barn, like the copy-and-pasted trees. Son of a bitch."

Sam starts opening each door, poking his head out of each one, and looking out through the little window. He eventually comes back toward Dean, saying, "I'm not seeing an Axis Mundi anywhere, just by the way. But the important thing is....I think this means you didn't really die that way. We were both already up here. In Heaven. It was all part of the illusion."

Dean gives Sam a long look. He walks outside, back to the night-time side, Sam trailing behind. He looks up at the starry sky, and at the moon, then at the barn.

Dean finally says, "You think it was just... what, a play, just for show? A scene for Chuck to enjoy?" He finds he's knotting his fists at his sides as he adds, "Was he... what, getting off on my... my _pain_? Or on my fear? Because that fucking _sucked_ , Sam. It really hurt. It _hurt_ , man. And...you know... I was scared. I was really scared."

"I know," says Sam, quietly. "I know you were."

Dean tries to shake off the awful memory. Another thought hits him, and he says, "Y'know, that also explains why I never saw a reaper. It was like, one second I was in the barn, then poof I was standing on the grass at the side of the Roadhouse. If I was _already_ here, that makes more sense. I probably just had to walk out that little door." He thinks a moment longer and adds, grimly, "It also explains why even though I had a spike the size of a frickin' Olympic javelin right through my goddamn chest, I wasn't even coughing up any blood. I could still talk! You know what, I don't think I even punctured a lung. And somehow my heart just kept right on pumping! No wonder I had time to give you that whole speech."

Sam gives a pained laugh. "It was a great speech, at least."

Dean snorts. "It was, wasn't it? But I'd really rather have, y'know, _not died that way_. Or not died _at all_ , come to think of it."

Sam looks at him for a long moment. Finally he says, a little hesitantly, "You didn't want me to call an ambulance."

Dean considers that. "There was no cell service," he points out. And then they both start laughing a little.

Sam's still chuckling as he says, "Okay, yeah, cell service in Heaven is really pretty bad." He grows serious again, adding, "But you didn't even want me to _try_ to get help." He sounds hesitant as he adds, "Was that... _you_ , or...."

He doesn't finish the thought, but Dean knows what he's getting at. Had Chuck been controlling Dean? Not just wiping selective bits of memory, but controlling Dean's actual decisions? Taking over his very will?

Dean forces himself to think about that moment again, the awful long minutes he'd been hanging helpless on that spike of rebar. There'd been pain. And fear. There'd been, too, a certainty that they were alone, and far from help; and that Cas was gone. (Dean realizes, now, that he'd been unable to remember Cas's name at the time, but nonetheless he'd had an awareness that they were lacking a third person, lacking an important friend.) They'd known Jack was gone, too. There'd been a sad and certain knowledge that were _no_ friends they could call on... that nobody could help.

Had there been, as well, a feeling that their lives felt somehow...empty?

Or rather, _unreal_? There's a memory in his head now of him and Sam alone in the bunker, side by side, Dean trying to cheer Sam up with an arm around the shoulder, both of them trying to smile, yet something about it feeling desperately hollow. Even the pie festival had been rather odd; a generic small town, the strange amount of pie (Dean likes pie, yeah, but... _six_ slices?). Generic people around that they didn't even know. No friends with them; not even any other hunters to check in with over the phone.

Had that, too, all been part of this strange Heaven? Had Dean known, somehow, when he'd been hanging there on that spike dying (or, thinking he was dying), that it wasn't actually a real life? And, therefore, wasn't worth trying to stay "alive" for?

And also, there'd been a little bit of an element of, _maybe it'll finally all be over. And maybe I'll see..._

_Maybe, if I die, I'll see my best friend again._

_Maybe I'll be able to get to where he is._

That had been at the back of his mind, too, hadn't it?

"I've never given up before," says Dean, thoughtfully. "Not like that. We've always fought so hard. Fought right to the bitter end, and beyond." He turns to Sam and says, "Look, I don't know if Chuck was in my mind, making me go all fatalistic-death-wish or what. I do think I was kinda thinking I might find Cas if I died, I dunno." Sam frowns at that, and Dean goes on, "But also I think... I think Chuck set up a situation that felt especially hopeless. An extra-pointless life, and then an extra-hopeless barn situation. Set it all up in a way where I thought death was maybe the better option. But I'm telling you now, for the record: I do NOT actually want to die. I'd rather live. I'd rather find Cas, _and_ live."

"That still true?" says Sam. "You sure?"

Dean nods, firmly, "You, me, and Cas, toes in the sand. I've said it before, I'll say it again. Toes in the sand, umbrellas in our drinks, Hawaiian shirts. And Eileen, too. And Jack. That is what I wanted, and that is what I still want." He points at the dark barn beside them with one finger and says emphatically, jabbing his finger at the barn, "I did NOT want this. I did NOT."

Dropping his hand to his side, Dean says, his voice rough, "Let's get out of here. I've seen enough."

They walk back around the corner of the building. The sky flickers back to daytime as they round the corner, the cricket sounds stopping and the birds starting up in mid-song. Dean's unfazed; the jumps from day to night, and night to day, seem routine now.

They automatically head back to the car, mostly for lack of anywhere else to go. Dean's already reaching out to open the driver's door before he remembers there's nowhere to drive to, and he pauses with his hand on the door handle, looking up at Sam, who's gazing at him from across the car roof as if he doesn't know what to do either.

"Just remembered it's a fake car," Dean confesses. "With nowhere to go."

"Fake car, fake guns," says Sam, leaning both elbows heavily on the gleaming Impala roof, running one hand through his hair. "Fake death."

That reminds Dean of a fundamental question that they still haven't answered. "So _are_ we dead? I mean, for real? When did reality stop and the illusion start?" he asks. "I mean, assuming our entire lives haven't been illusion the whole time. Let's assume that's true, at least...partly just because I'll be so pissed if it’s not!"

Sam gives a small smile. But the smile fades fast, and he folds his hands on the car's glossy hood, facing Dean thoughtfully. "So," Sam says, "the question is, when did we shift to being up here? And did we actually die in the process?"

Both brothers look at each other for a long moment, Dean tapping one finger restlessly on the car roof as they think about this thorny, unanswerable puzzle.

"Jack said we lost," Sam finally says. "So I'm thinking that in reality, on Earth, we ended up... well, dead. Dead on that lakeshore. Probably we were both just lying there in the rain when Jack woke up."

Dean considers that. "Then, that goodbye scene in the town, with Jack going poof on the street would've been totally fake too, right?" Sam nods, and then they're both quiet for another moment, trying to remember the sequence of events, trying to identify the point when "real" — or, at least, as real as their lives had ever been — had been completely replaced with divine illusion. "Then..." Dean says slowly, gazing off toward the ever-present green mountain as he tries to remember, "we had some kind of a happy drive-into-the-sunset moment, didn't we? Like... we were kinda sitting in the bunker together, trying to smile, and then driving somewhere. Though, I didn't actually feel that happy. Do you remember that bit?"

"I definitely do," says Sam. "I sort of remember feeling commanded to smile and trying to do it, but it wasn't really coming out right."

"He was goddam puppeteer'ing us," says Dean. Now he's getting angry again; the restless tapping of his finger on the roof is starting to change into an irritated thumping, with a fully clenched fist. Dean forces himself to stop thumping the car. " _Damn_. It's really freaking me out to think Chuck could have been controlling us to that extent. Feeding us whole illusions, commanding us to smile. He was in our _minds_ , Sam. I always thought at least we had free will, y'know? That was the whole point!"

Sam shrugs. "Well, there's always been some spells that can do that. Like that love spell that Becky put me under, right? And those pocket-universes Gabriel put us in a couple times." Dean considers that and gives a half-nod; it's true that there've been a few times when they'd lost free will — temporarily. Sam continues, "It's not the first time we've been sort of... well, puppeteered, I guess. But it never really lasts, does it? I kinda wonder if it's not easy for Chuck to do that — else, he'd have been doing it all along, wouldn't he? I'm guessing he had to resort to his crudest methods to try to force the ending he wanted. But it isn't sticking! The second he lost interest and went away, and Jack snapped us out of the trance, we started acting on our own again. We're remembering things now, we're making our own decisions again — I'm sure of it. So, it was temporary."

"Tried to go all puppet-master in the end, but the puppets still won't behave," sums up Dean. "Well....It makes me feel _a bit_ better to think it was no better than a love potion. Those things always wear off. And we _are_ getting back to normal now. Well, if one thing's clear, it's that this whole Heaven he put together up here for us is lazy as fuck, like I said before, and half-assed from one end to the other." He points back toward the main road. "Same loop road for all our driving." He gestures at the little Roadhouse. "Couldn't even be bothered with two different buildings for the Roadhouse and the barn, just stuffed them together, didn't even build out a full Roadhouse. Re-used an old barn that he'd seen us in before. Couldn't even be bothered coming up with a plausible way to die — just stuck a giant spike on a barn wall, even though that makes zero sense." Dean takes a breath and concludes, "So, I still think a half-assed Heaven like this has gotta have a way out."

"We haven't fully checked this side road," points out Sam, looking back along the dirt road that leads to the bridge, and, beyond that, back to the loop road. "You just flew down here to the Roadhouse at like sixty miles an hour."

"Right," says Dean, nodding. He pulls the driver's door open. "Road inspection, part two. Let's check out this dirt road, end to end. And in reverse!" They both pile into the car, and Dean fires up the non-existent engine one more time.

* * *

_A/N - Next chapter will post tomorrow! And, as always - please drop a comment if you're liking this! Been loving all the feedback so far & hope you're still enjoying each installment. :)_


	7. A Feeling Of Years

* * *

They drive the little dirt road slowly this time, peering all around them as they go. On the first pass, they drive forwards to assess what's in clear view. The little dirt road's only about a half mile long. It begins at the parking lot of the so-called "Roadhouse" (or, "spiky death barn" as Dean's thinking of it now), goes past a picturesque set of copy-and-pasted tree clumps, then over the concrete bridge, and a few hundred feet beyond that it joins the main loop road.

They're both hesitant to return to the main loop itself, so once they get to the intersection, Dean swings the car around in a three-point turn and they drive the dirt road back the other way, still facing front. They're driving slowly, scrutinizing everything they can see, but nothing obvious jumps out; they just end up back at the Roadhouse parking lot.

On the third pass they drive in reverse the whole way, looking through the rear window the whole time, from the Roadhouse to the loop road. Nothing shows up.

"Let's try it backwards again, back the other way," suggests Sam. "Back to the Roadhouse."

"This is getting annoying," says Dean, with a sigh, as he hooks one arm back over the front seat and cranes around, yet again, to peer through the rear window as he drives in reverse. He gives the Impala a little gas and tries to focus on the backwards-steering, straightening the car out from an initial yaw. "Gettin' a little tired of twisting my neck off like this," he comments. "Gettin' too old for this. Why couldn't he have just made it visible in the rearview mirror too?"

"God works in mysterious ways?" suggests Sam, a slightly sarcastic tone in his voice.

"God works in _asshole_ ways," grumbles Dean, and Sam just laughs.

But they get all the way back to the Roadhouse with nothing new in sight. Dean maneuvers the Impala into the parking lot, still going backwards, racking his brains for what they can try next, when abruptly he spots a small _third_ road slide into view in the rear window, this one paved. It's heading off from the Roadhouse parking lot at a new angle, going off into the woods.

"Bingo!" says Sam, who's also looking through the rear window. "See that?"

"Well, well, well," says Dean, pausing the car. They're both still craned around in their seats, staring through the rear window at the new road. "Paydirt. Chuck's nothing if not predictable."

"Axis Mundi?" says Sam. "Or just another road in this Heaven?"

Dean pauses, considering. He says, "Keep an eye on it. I'm gonna try something." He starts to swing the Impala around in a wide circle while Sam studies the road.

"It's disappearing...." says Sam, swiveling around in his seat to try to keep the road in view while the car spins around in a tiny circle. "It's gone. Okay wait, it's reappearing now— it's back!" The car's now completed a full three-sixty, and the new road's in full view again — but only through the rear window. "Okay, it's definitely doing that same thing where it only shows up when we're looking backwards," concludes Sam. "I'm thinking that means, not Axis Mundi? Just, still all in this one weird Heaven, with Chuck kind of shoving us from one place to the next? Trying to hide parts of the Heaven from us once he's done with them?"

Dean nods. "Good working theory, anyway. But even if it's not the Axis Mundi, let's check it out."

They keep going, down the new road this time. Dean takes it slow, maneuvering the Impala in reverse at first, but after some experimenting they realize that only the intersection with the Roadhouse parking lot is hidden; once they're fully on the new road, it stays in clear view whether they're going frontwards or backwards. It's a relief when they figure this out, for Dean can at last swing the car around to point forwards again. And on they go. In under a minute they're passing through a tiny fake town that turns out to have been the site of the pie festival. Dean stops here, and both brothers exit the car and try to check out the little town, but rapidly discover that it consists only of a half-block of facades that don't lead to any real buildings. Nobody's in sight and there doesn't seem to be much else to investigate. There are no people now, and no other vehicles. Even the little food truck that had been serving the pie on that long-ago day seems to be gone.

"There's not even any pie anymore," comments Dean, a little sadly, as they get back into the car.

"It'd probably be crap pie," says Sam.

Dean laughs. "Probably designed to replicate the first pie Dad ever gave me. First crappy pie we ever bought from a Gas-n-Sip in 1992 in Boise, or some dumb shit like that. Well, never mind. The road keeps going, so let's keep checking it out."

Returning to the car, they keep on going (facing front again). But it proves to lead only to a single deserted house. Sam swears under his breath when the house comes into view.

"My life after you died," he says quietly. "That was my house."

They get out and walk up to the house. It's a big old Victorian with a porch in the front, and a garage just visible in the back.

"You really went full picket fence, huh, Sammy?" says Dean. "Full apple-pie."

Sam grimaces. "I didn't pick this, you know that," he says.

They both walk to the porch. Sam hesitates at the door — he seems almost as disturbed about this house as Dean had been about the barn. So instead of going right in, Dean moves over and peers inside a big picture window that's visible from the porch. There's a pretty spacious room inside, with a hospital bed right in the center, complete with an IV pole.

"I remember this!" says Sam, moving up beside Dean. "That was my deathbed! This is where _I_ died, Dean!" He shakes his head and adds softly, "I was so old. Dying of old age, I think. Or..." He pauses, considering. "I thought I was, anyway. I _felt_ old, at least."

"How old exactly, do you think?" says Dean. He moves even closer to the window, putting his nose up against it and shielding the light with his hands as he peers through the glass. "I'm wondering if the years all passed up here or if some of it was real. Like, maybe some of that life that you're remembering was real, and happened down on Earth? Or, was all of it up here?"

"Hard to say," says Sam. Dean glances at him; Sam still looks a little disturbed, like it's unsettling to try to figure out if decades of his memories, memories of a very long life, had, or had not, actually passed in reality. Sam says slowly, "I think I was in my seventies, maybe, when I was dying? Seventy-five or so? Something like that. I felt just _terrible_. Everything hurt; I was all, arthritic or something, I guess. Everything just hurt all over. Let's see, my son was all grown up, if that helps put a date on things. He was with me when I died."

"So he'd have been, what, forty or something?" asks Dean. "Were there grandkids?"

"Oh, no, he wasn't that old," says Sam, shaking his head. "Nowhere near. No grandkids, no, nothing like that. Just the one kid, and he was just college age or so when I died. But definitely not a little kid anymore."

Dean looks at him. "Wait. _College_ age?"

Sam suddenly looks uncertain. "Um... I think so? Twenties at the latest."

"You were dying of old age at seventy-five years old and your son was _college age_?"

"Um," says Sam. "Oh. Um. Huh." He lets out a little laugh. "That math doesn't really work, does it?"

"Not unless you suddenly decided to have your first kid at age fifty-five," Dean says. "You cradle-robber, you." He nudges Sam with an elbow. "One of those April-December romances, was it?"

"But I remember him being a toddler when I was still pretty much the age I am now!" says Sam, now looking totally confused. "He was a toddler when I was no more than, oh, forty, so... when I was seventy-five, he'd be... uh..." He stops for a moment, frowning, and finally he says, "I have this total mishmash of memories. It's not really coming together."

"Which hopefully means it was all fake," says Dean. "I'm starting to think that not only was it all up here, but it wasn't really forty continuous years. Just a, like... smattering of scenes?" Sam's still looking bothered, frowning down at his feet now, and Dean adds hurriedly, "Not that it wouldn't be cool to have a kid, I mean — damn, sorry, I hope I'm not shattering some beloved father-son memories here or anything, I just meant—"

"No, no, I get what you mean," says Sam. He takes a breath and looks up at Dean. "And you're not shattering anything. It's funny, I have this like, vague memory of bits of father-son stuff but really not much specific. I mean, I won't be heartbroken if it turns out to have been all fake." He adds, with some heat, "Actually I feel a _hell_ of lot more fatherly about Jack. Just for example."

Dean laughs. "And you've only known _him_ for three years. Well, hopefully that tells us something right there." Sam nods, and he looks a little more settled now, so Dean claps him on the shoulder and says, "C'mon, let's check out the inside. If you can totter that far, you ol' geezer, you."

* * *

Together they walk slowly through the entrance hall (which is decorated solely with pictures of Sam and Dean), and into the room with the hospital bed. They move to the foot of the bed and regard it together, side by side. Sam's very quiet. Wanting to give him a little space with his thoughts, Dean eventually moves around the bed to a mantel against the back wall, where there's a whole line of framed pictures, and a big blown-up photograph in a huge frame that's mounted above all the others. Pictures from Sam's life, apparently.

It occurs to Dean, then, that maybe there might be a photo of Castiel.

It would be _very_ good to see Castiel's face again. So Dean starts going through all the photos, hoping there'll be one of Cas. He's soon disappointed; there's no Cas in sight. Not that Dean can seem to retain a clear image of Cas's face, but nonetheless he feels certain that he would recognize Cas if he saw him. Just in case, he rapidly re-scans all the photos, this time checking everybody's eye color, searching for those blue eyes. But the only blue eyes in sight belong to Mom. Dean ends up disconsolately gazing at the big portrait that's hung above all the others. It shows the whole Winchester family — Sam, Dean, Mom, and Dad — and it's huge, framed dead center above all the other pictures in a position where it dominates the whole room.

"Jeez, Sam," he finally comments. "This family portrait's, like, a mile tall."

Sam looks up from the bed with a faint smile. "I remember that one. It does seem a little excessive, doesn't it?"

"I think I could see it from the moon," says Dean. "Wait... when was it taken?" He takes a step back, frowning. The photograph shows Mom and Dad both seated, and Dean and Sam leaning over them, all four smiling at the camera. But it's Dean and Sam _as adults_.

Dean cocks his head, thinking. "That had to have been that one day we had with the family dinner, right? When we had the time-travel thing where we summoned Dad from 2003? That's the only time we were all together. But then... where'd that photo come from? I mean, who took it? There was nobody else with us that day. Did we do a, like, timed photo or something? I don't remember that."

"You know what else," says Sam slowly, coming up next to him. "We were both beat all to hell that day. By the time we all four got a real moment together, Cas had done a number on us both."

"What?" Dean says, turning to him sharply. "Cas— what?"

"I mean, fake Cas. Alternate Cas," Sam explains in a hurry. "It was, like, an alternate reality, remember? Reality if Dad had never done his thing... reality if you and Cas had never met, and if you'd never, like, had any influence on him... um." Once again, Sam's suddenly looking a little awkward. "Anyway, I blew that Cas away with a sigil. But the point is, by the time we got back to Mom and Dad that evening and had that dinner, we both looked like crap, remember?"

Dean nods. "I do remember that much. You were beat all to hell — bruised up something fancy. And I had a beaut of a split lip. But—" He looks at the photo again. "I see what you're getting at. We look totally fine in this photo."

Sam moves closer to the big portrait. With his height, he's almost at eye level with Mom's and Dad's huge faces. "Wait a second..." he murmurs. He leans closer still, almost putting his nose up to it, and eventually he gives a short laugh. "I don't believe it," he says. "This is photoshopped."

"What, seriously?" Dean moves up next to him, and Sam points out a blurry edge of pixels that's running along the outline of Dad's face, and Mom's too. Dean lets out a low whistle. "So, literal God can't even _photoshop_ right? Figures."

Sam gives another faint laugh, and says, "Looks like he was using fifteen-year old software. Maybe from when he was writing those books, down on Earth. Probably still has that old computer."

Dean snorts, shakes his head, and eventually returns to checking out all the other photos on the mantel. He's mostly given up now on the hope of finding an image of Cas, but he's curious now to see what he can learn about the rest of Sam's long life— or, Sam's apparently long life, anyway.

But all the pictures are of Sam, and Dean, and sometimes Mom and Dad. And nobody else.

"Wait... where's your wife?" Dean says. "And your kid?" He takes a step back and scans all the photos again: it's all just Winchesters. Sam, Dean, Mom and Dad, in various combinations. Not Sam's kid, and not Sam's wife. "You got any pictures of your wife? I wanted to see who Chuck was gonna set you up with."

Sam shrugs, a little helplessly. "I told you there were no photos of her, didn't I?"

"I didn't think you meant it _literally_ ," says Dean. He's surprised, and as he thinks about it more, a little appalled. He shifts one step back and takes in the entire spread of Winchester-only photos. "You literally had no photos of _your wife_? _None_? And now that I think about it..." He gestures up at the huge Winchester family portrait. "Isn't it a little... well, unusual, for a grown man to have a giant mile-high portrait of his _childhood_ family, not his _current_ family, that's bigger than every other picture that he has? I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm touched you wanted to remember me, but, didn't you _also_ have your _own_ family by now? What happened to the wife?"

Sam gives a little laugh. "I hadn't thought about it that way." He glances around the room too, his eyes flicking over all the photographs one by one, and now he's looking a little puzzled. "I guess I got divorced? She wasn't there when I died, either, by the way."

"So...you got married, got divorced, and _never had another girlfriend for the rest of your life?_ " says Dean. "Because there's no photos of any later women either." Something about this is starting to seem almost funny, in a very surreal way, and Dean feels a smile creeping onto his face as he says, "Has Chuck _met_ you? I mean, I know you've had a rough time in the girl department, Sammy, but even with being a hunter and all, you have _definitely_ had a string of girls! Even if you got divorced, you would've eventually found another girl! And the thing is — you already have an actual girlfriend! A real one! Why'd he bother setting you up with someone else?" He's looking at all the photos again, one by one, moving a few of the ones in front to look at the ones behind. "And also — _where's the kid?_ Okay, I'm calling foul on that one. No ex-wife photos I can maybe see, if there was a divorce or whatever, but zero kid pictures is just bizarre. When have you ever met a parent who didn't have a million photos of their kid?"

"Um," says Sam, chuckling a little, "Okay, I think I'm starting to conclude none of this was real. Remember, my kid also had to have his name written across his chest. Not only did I have no photos of him at all, I guess I kept forgetting his name?"

"And by the way, there's no photos of Cas either," Dean points out, surveying the walls again. "He was... he was your friend too, right?" He turns to Sam, almost worried now, hoping for verification that Cas had mattered to Sam too.

"Oh, hell, yeah," Sam says instantly, to Dean's relief.

"A good friend?"

"My closest friend outside of you," Sam says. "I mean, I know you and him had that special profound-bond or whatever—" Dean blinks, a little startled to hear this, and Sam laughs. "Don't give me that look. Cas said it himself. You guys had a, um..." And suddenly Sam's coloring a little. "You guys had kind of an, almost an, he called it a profound — but, well, I never was quite sure if — uh, um, well anyway, um, yeah, he was definitely my friend."

Dean's drawing a breath to ask what, exactly, Sam is talking about. (Or rather, totally failing to talk about.) But Sam, who's now scanning all the photos again himself, says "I see what you mean. No photos of Cas. Or of Jack! I've got a ton of photos on my phone of both of them! So... there's no friends or other family at all?"

"Yeah, not just no wife or kid, there's also no friends." Dean points out. "No Jodie. No Donna. No group of buddies from Men of Letters or fellow hunters or anything. Or, like, _anybody_ other than Mom and Dad and me."

After a moment Sam gives a baffled shrug. "Guess Chuck made me forget everybody else."

Eventually they give up on the hospital-bed room and its bizarre assemblage of photos, and check the rest of the house. Most of it's barren, but both brothers are disturbed to find a couple of rooms that seem to be replicas of bunker rooms. There's a table very like the library table, where they both remember sitting side-by-side, Dean's arm around Sam's shoulder, both of them trying to smile; yet in the very next room over is another table where Sam's sure he'd once helped his indefinitely-aged kid work through some homework problems.

It's becoming quite clear that everything after the fight on the lakeshore had probably been illusion. Which means Sam's "life" here had probably been only a few isolated scenes, imbued with what Sam describes as a "feeling of years" — a fuzzy feeling that a lot of time had passed.

It's a lot to take in. They're both pretty quiet by the time they get out to the garage.

Where they find a car.

It's hidden at first by a neatly fitted dust cover, but it's got an awfully familiar shape. Dean grabs one end of the cover and whisks it half off the car, and there underneath is an entire second Impala, identical to the one that they've just parked out front.

"You _mothballed the Impala_?" Dean says.

"Oh, yeah, I kinda remember this," says Sam, touching the car gently. "I guess it's just another fake car, though."

"I know it's fake! It's the _idea_! You _mothballed_ it? Didn't you ever drive it?

"Nah, I never drove it," says Sam. "I would just come here and. Um. Well, I'd just sit in it and cry about you."

Dean blinks at him. "Come again? You'd... what?"

"Cry about you," says Sam. "I'd come out here now and then and, like... just sit in the car and cry. About what happened in the barn." Sam's got an odd look on his face as he adds, "Which, I'm now realizing, was all of a hundred feet down the road, and, also, all the time I was here, you were zipping right past on the loop road every ten minutes and I never knew!" He's starting to smile. "I was literally sitting here crying about you, in _this_ fake Impala, and you were, like, driving right on past oblivious, just going around and around in a second fake Impala like you were on a merry-go-around!" And now he's starting to chuckle. "I was, like, _literally in tears_ , Dean—" and now he's laughing for real, and it's all so weird that Dean just starts laughing too, and then suddenly they're both busting up so hard they almost can't breathe.

Dean's buckled over laughing so hard that it's a few moments before he can even get a word out. Finally he manages to say, " _You never made a single other friend in forty years!"_

Sam cracks up over all over again. He manages to say, "I had a _blurry wife_! Who I _never even got to meet!"_

Dean adds, " _You had to stencil your kid's name across his chest!"_

Sam's actually wheezing. "You should've seen me, I would like, put my hands on steering wheel and be like, _wahhhhhh, I miss my brotherrrr,_ and you were RIGHT DOWN THE ROAD! TEN MINUTES AWAY _!"_

 _"_ Singing that freakin' song ten thousand times every time I went past!" Dean says, still laughing.

"I would just sit here and think about your hour-long speech," Sam says.

" _Two hours at least!"_ says Dean. "But, no time to call 911!"

"The ambulance response time really sucks on those infinite Heaven loops, y'see, _"_ says Sam.

 _"_ You know, you could've, like, gone to your blurry wife for comfort, you ever think of that?"

"Nah, I would've had to have learned her name," says Sam. And then they're both buckled over laughing again. Sam manages to say, "Also she would've had to have, y'know, _existed_ ," and they laugh, and laugh, and laugh.

The laughter finally slows, to chuckles and then to silence. Dean's still wiping the tears from his eyes. Sam gives a huge sigh.

It's not really funny at all, of course, but it feels good to at least laugh with Sammy again, if just about how surreal and bizarre it all is. Dean finally says, "This is a truly fucked-up fake life that he built for you." He lets out a sigh. "One thing I'm learning is, even after all these eons, apparently Chuck still just doesn't _get_ humans. Like, at all. Do you think he ever understand that it's possible to care about your brother _and also_ have a life?"

Sam shakes his head, very firmly. "That's exactly it. It's like he thinks there can be only one relationship. Only one thing that matters."

 _Because of you, I loved the whole world,_ Dean hears in his head. He can even hear the tone of voice; low, gravelly.

_Because of you, I loved the whole world._

"Love expands," mutters Dean.

"What's that?"

"Love grows," Dean explains. Or, tries to explain. He can't quite remember where the scrap of memory is coming from — something to do with Castiel again, he suspects — but there's an idea in his head now, a concept, something about somebody learning to love one person, and from that one love, learning to love the whole world. Dean tries to put it into words: "The more you love someone, the more the world opens up. It's like, love's not a limited resource. It grows. It expands. You start caring about _more_ people, not fewer. _Including_ people that you're _not_ related to. I don't think Chuck ever really got that."

"For him, there's just him and Amara," points out Sam. "Maybe he truly can't picture what it's really _like_ to have more than one person in your life."

That makes sense. A lot of sense, once Dean thinks about it. Chuck only has one sibling; it's the only family he has, and, even more than that, the only other _entity_ that even seems real to him. "Maybe a story about siblings is all he can imagine," says Dean.

Sam nods. "And ending up alone with your sibling is the only ending he can imagine. Being separated from your sibling for a while, then being reunited... it's the only story he really knows firsthand. Because, that's exactly what _his_ story was! Him and Amara."

Dean nods, slowly. He looks again at the second Impala, and touches one finger to its glossy hood. Then he takes the dust cover and spreads it back over the car, covering it all the way back up.

"Let's get out of here," he says. "This place was never your home."

Sam gives a short nod in agreement. "It was a jail," he says quietly. As they leave the garage and walk away from the house, back toward the first Impala, Sam doesn't even look back. He adds, "It was a morgue. I feel like I was half-dead the whole time."

"Except for the times you cried about me like a little girl, right?" says Dean. He means it as light-hearted teasing, and Sam half-laughs, but the laugh dies rather quickly, and then Sam's stuffing his hands in his pockets, looking at the ground as they walk back to the car.

Finally Sam says, "I was miserable, if you want to know the truth." He shakes his head, and says softly, "I was so fucking lonely."

"Don't know if I should be touched that you missed me, or appalled that Chuck thought that was a good life for you," says Dean. "Forty years of loneliness? Or even if it wasn't forty actual years, still, just the impression of forty years.... Probably felt like Hell, huh?"

Sam's quiet, just giving a quick nod, and then he gets into his side of the car. Dean climbs in the driver's side, and looks at him a moment. Finally Sam meets his eyes, with a long sigh.

Dean reaches out and thumps him on the shoulder. Then he turns the key in the ignition, saying just, "Chuck is gonna pay for that. Someday. Somehow." He swings the Impala around, into reverse, and twists around to look through the rear window yet again. "Let's try reverse again, but on this new road, going in the other direction. Keep your eyes peeled. I swear we're gonna find a way out."

* * *

They drive both roads several more times — the new paved road that has Sam's Victorian house and the fake town, and the dirt road that connects the Roadhouse, the bridge and the loop road. They drive them both in reverse, both directions; then facing front, both directions; then facing front but with Sam watching through the rear window the whole way, both directions. They even get out of the car and do it all on foot, walking end to end, even testing out whether walking backwards might help. They walk all the way around the Roadhouse a few more times; they walk around the fake town, and back and forth over the bridge, and around Sam's Victorian house. There's a few minor discoveries, like a grassy lawn behind the house where Sam says he once played with his unmemorable little toddler. But there's nothing like an Axis Mundi, and there seems to be no way out. At one point Dean even attempts to drive the second Impala — but it turns out it has no pedals or ignition, and won't run at all. 

They find nothing more — no other paths, walkways or roads.

After another fruitless pass in the functioning Impala up and down the little dirt road, Dean stops the car on the bridge, unsure what to do. The only idea he's got left is to try to stand exactly where he'd been standing when Sam had first appeared (maybe there's some portal there? At least, maybe a little portal back to Sam's house?) They walk around on the bridge for a bit, Sam trying to remember exactly where he'd appeared, but don't find anything.

For a while now Dean's been trying to fend off a growing sense of discouragement. "I'm out of ideas," he finally confesses to Sam. "I guess we could go tromping through the trees again? Or drive the loop road in reverse? We haven't tried that yet." He gives a long sigh, as he stands at the bridge railing gazing out at the little river. "Maybe this _is_ the Bad Place."

"As Hells go, at least it isn't too bad," points out Sam. "We're together. I think I'd go completely nuts if I was alone for much longer. So, there's that." He glances around at the sky. "Weather's not bad. I don't seem to be feeling hungry, or thirsty."

"The beer sucks, though," says Dean. "The pie's totally _gone_. And as much as I like your company, and as much as I like my car, driving another thousand loops of the same road with the same song is not actually how I wanted to spend eternity." He lets out a heavy sigh, setting both hands on the railing and staring at the little river. "And Chuck could've at least given us some prettier views, don't you think," he says. "Especially here, actually. Just this bunch of rocks for our reunion scene. And this one poky little river." His eyes track the flow of water. It's not much of a river, really, more like a skinny creek making its way through a mostly-dried-out riverbed that seems to be primarily rocks. The stream itself is only about five feet wide. It's catching the sun, throwing off glitters of light. The glitter snags Dean's attention, and it reminds him of that mysterious image of Castiel that he can't seem to shake, of that glitter he'd seen in Cas's eyes. A glitter of tears.

What did Cas say?

_What did Cas say?_

Dean closes his eyes, trying to focus.

_What did Cas say?_

Cas's voice had been a little unusual, hadn't it? Low-pitched, maybe? Rough? Like that bit about "loving the whole world", that phrase Dean had suddenly remembered back at the house? Dean lets go of trying to remember the specific phrase that's driving him crazy, the thing Cas had said in that room with the brick wall and the sigil on the door, and instead he tries to see if he can even just remember _anything_ more Cas had said to him, ever, anything at all. Just to remember even one more phrase, to try to catch hold of that voice again....

 _Help me out, Cas. Help me out here,_ he thinks.

There's nothing.

He opens his eyes again, looking at the little river almost in despair. It's still glinting in the sunlight, glittering brightly, as it winds its way through the rocks and disappears between the dark banks of trees in the distance. Glittering; shining.

 _To some it looks like a tunnel, or light_ , Dean hears in his head.

Someone had said that to him once. Someone with a low voice.

Cas. He's sure. Cas had said that.

_To some it looks like a tunnel, or light._

Dean stares at the little river, his mouth dropping open.

"Sam...." says Dean, pointing at the water. Sam follows his gaze, looking ahead to where the ribbon of water, glinting with reflected sunlight, disappears into a dark tunnel of trees.

Sam straightens up; Dean hears him take in a breath of air. "Is that..." says Sam, almost in a whisper, "...do you think that's, like... a _path_? A path of water?"

"Pretty sure that what Cas said about the Axis Mundi was, it can look like a tunnel or light," says Dean. "And that looks a lot like light going through a tunnel. C'mon." He's already trotting to the edge of the bridge. Sam hurries to catch up. Together they clamber off the road, down to the riverbank, and then pick their way through the rocks over to the little stream.

Dean wades right into the water. Oddly, his feet don't seem to get wet, or even cold. In fact, they feel warm, more than anything. He leans down and puts his hand in the water, and feels only a flow of soft warmth, as if a warm wind is moving past his fingers. Sam splashes into the stream next to him, and reaches down to touch the water too. Wordlessly, they look at each other, and then both straighten up and look ahead. The sunlight's hitting the stream even more strongly from this angle, and the whole stream seems to be glowing, radiant with light, heading into a tunnel of dark trees.

"This has gotta be it," whispers Sam.

"Yep," says Dean. His heart's thumping. "Look, we don't know where this is gonna take us. Could be someplace worse, you know. I'm really hoping this is the Axis Mundi but... I dunno. And even if we get to the Garden, I don't know if that's gonna help anyway."

"At least maybe we'll find somebody else to talk to," Sam points out. "That Joshua guy, maybe. Though, Cas said almost all the angels are gone.”

"At least we can look. We gotta try something. We can't just stay here. If we really wanted to spent eternity stoned into a trance and driving in circles singing classic rock, we could've just moved to Colorado."

Sam snorts. "Agreed. All right, let's go, then."

Dean suggests, "Maybe, I dunno, keep a hand on my shoulder or something."

Sam nods, and sets a hand on Dean's left shoulder. It almost makes Dean jump, and he looks down at Sam's hand in some shock.

For a fleeting moment he remembers a bloody handprint there. Right there, on that shoulder. Right on that sleeve.

It takes his breath away.

"You okay?" Sam asks, his hand lifting. "Your shoulder hurting or something?"

"No, no, I'm fine," Dean says, a little out of breath. "Just...memory glitches again. It’s, it’s fine - you can leave your hand there."

 _Someone else put a hand on my shoulder once_ , Dean knows. _Not Sam. Somebody else._ And of course it had to have been Cas. He'd seen Cas with a bloody hand; and somehow Dean had ended up with a bloody handprint on his shoulder. Something had happened, that day. Something very important had happened.

Dean takes a slow breath, trying to steady himself. Sam's watching him, looking a little worried.

If nothing else, maybe if he gets out of this Heaven, he can at least learn a little more about Cas. Maybe remember what it was that Cas had said that seems to matter so much...and maybe, just maybe, someday, find a way to crack him out of the Empty.

Dean swallows, and gives Sam a nod.

Together they walk forward.

The first few steps feel normal. The only noticeable change at first is that the glitter on the water becomes mesmerizing, the thousand sparkles of light blurring together into something that seems overwhelmingly lovely. On about the eighth step the stream seems to expand, the light brightening. Dean feels Sam's hand tighten on his shoulder. He thinks, _C'mon, Cas, show us the way_ , and just as he's realizing that he's probably just sent out a prayer, the light blooms around them. The little river becomes an ocean, the trees disappear, and the world goes white.

* * *

_A/N - I'm so happy to hear that you've all been enjoying my take on 19 & 20\. I found I couldn't set them aside, at least not for my first fic after the finale; I wanted to see if there was a way to work within them, to find a way to reinterpret them that let 19 and 20 stand as canon, yet in a way that gave them a whole new twist and allowed the characters to move forward. _

_Probably a few more weeks until the next set of chapters. They're plotted out and the next one is drafted, but I have to turn back to science writing for the next week (got a paper going in to a science journal shortly, and a proposal due at NSF) - and I really want to give the chapters some time and get them right, so forgive me if there's a delay before the next update. Hope you've enjoyed this weekend's updates, and hopefully it's given you all a break from the real-world chaos! Please drop more comments if you have a moment - I love to hear from you!_


	8. The Bunker

_I'm so terribly sorry for the delay in posting to this fic - it's been over a month! I've been working nonstop 14-hour days for a long time, BUT, a week ago a huge NSF proposal that I'm lead PI of was finally submitted, a paper I've been working on for 3 years was just submitted to a journal a few days ago, classes are underway and my biggest class is finally under control. And - we're about to reach the one-year anniversary of covid-19. Which for us university teachers (who've been working overtime and nonstop since literally March 9, 2020, to put lab after lab, and lecture after lecture, online, an extra 10-15 hours of work each week even when it goes smoothly) - well, at last we're cycling back to the point where it's all been put online already. All of which means - AT LAST I've got a bit of time for fic-writing again. From here on I'll be trying my best to post a chapter every weekend. Not sure I'll succeed, but I'll try!_

_We re-join our heroes on their first steps on the Axis Mundi. They'd finally realized that the little rocky stream that runs under the concrete bridge in their "loop Heaven" was glowing with light where it disappeared into the trees, and they've waded into the stream, and it's taken them... somewhere. Have they escaped the loop at last? And if so, where are they?_

* * *

For a moment it seems there are still faint shapes of trees on either side, still a stream glowing serenely underfoot, and then the ground seems to drop away. Dean staggers. Sam gives a rough gasp of surprise, his hand tightening on Dean's shoulder as if he's lost his balance too. Dean's flailing to regain his balance, certain he's falling, and he instinctively reaches a hand out toward the trees on the left bank, even though they're already vanishing in the light. He's startled to feel his hand land on a tree that's somehow much closer than it should have been. The tree seems to shift under his hand, shrinking, its trunk narrowing right under Dean's fingers, and also becoming strangely cool and smooth and... metallic?

The light fades, Dean's vision slowly starts to clear, and he discovers he's holding a waist-high metal handrail of some sort. There's still a glow coming from underfoot, but it's not the stream anymore. It's some kind of map, far below where they're standing.

His vision clears further and as everything comes into focus, he realizes they're standing on a little landing by the top of a staircase. A curved iron staircase. In a circular room. And there, below them, is the map table.

"We're... back home?" says Sam beside him, his hand slowly releasing Dean's shoulder. "We're in the bunker?"

"Sure looks like it," says Dean back, keeping his voice low; he's not at all sure that it's safe. They both look around. It all looks familiar; there's the front door just behind them, there's the big circuit-breaker light switches on the wall; there's the stairway, stretching down on their right side; there's the map table and the old Men Of Letters monitoring stations down below. It's the bunker.

"This can't be real," Sam says, now in a whisper.

"Doubt it," whispers Dean back. It seems natural to whisper, as if they're hoping Chuck can't hear them if they just keep their voices low.

Though, if Chuck's anywhere still around, there's not much point in whispering, is there? Chuck could just have the Winchester Show displayed on a huge high-res monitor, with his feet up and a bowl full of popcorn, and Amara by his side, for all they know. Dean shakes his head, trying to shove the image away. Hopefully Chuck and Amara are really gone.

 _Amara bought us time_ , he thinks. _She put the world in a box to buy us some time away from Chuck. Got to use it wisely._

Dean scans around again. "This has gotta still be Heaven," he says. "Though we did seem to leave the Heaven we were in. Could be another fake Chuck set, though, right? Like that barn."

"Or it could be a legit Heaven," Sam says. "Maybe we're out of the fake Chuck Heaven, and in a real one? I mean, a real Heaven memory?"

"I don't know," says Dean, shaking his head. "This was a decent safe house for us, sure. It's been a good base of operations. But... a lot of bad shit went down here too." In fact, as he looks around at the iron landing that they're currently standing on, a shiver goes up his spine. Hadn't someone nasty been standing here recently? _Right_ here, right where Dean's standing now? A... a reaper, maybe? He can almost see it: Somebody'd been standing here with a... with a scythe. The details are fuzzy, but his chest seems to hurt at the memory. Whatever had happened, it had been terrible.

He says to Sam, "My memories are still kinda glitchy, but all I'm coming up with is bad memories here. Besides, would we really want to spend eternity in the bunker?"

"Maybe there's at least a couple good memories here. Also — last time we were in Heaven, it was a bunch of different memories, remember?" points out Sam. They're still both speaking in hushed voices, and Sam goes on quietly, "It's like our Heavens weren't just a single place — more like, the Axis Mundi had this whole chain of Heavens for us, each one just one good memory. A whole bunch of our own possible Heavens, each with another good memory, all in a row. Some of mine, some of yours. And we did have _some_ good times here, after all."

"Okay," Dean says, with a shrug. "Gotta be one of your memories then, because I am not remembering all that many awesome times here." Though even as he says this, something goes fluttering through his mind, something about the bunker; some faint flicker of memory of pleasant interactions, of conversations with... somebody.

Like... a cup of coffee appearing at his shoulder.

Like... the sight of an old tape player before him. Dean can almost see it, almost remembers reaching out and hitting "Record", smiling as he does so, thinking about the song he was recording, and thinking about somebody else who, hopefully, would like that song too.

Like... making popcorn, pouring it into a big bowl. Like he'd been about to watch a movie with someone.

Like... sitting in his room; hearing footsteps in the hallway, a distinctive tread. Not Sam; not Jack either. Somebody else. Dean can almost feel it, how it had lightened his spirits to hear that distinctive footfall; how he'd lifted his head in expectation, turning to greet the person at his door.

 _There's still memories I'm missing_ , Dean realizes.

And, he knows by now, they're probably about Cas.

"Well, let's check it out," he says to Sam. "But, we gotta be careful. Remember how Zachariah found us on the Axis Mundi, last time."

"Zachariah's dead," Sam replies. "Cas said almost all the angels are dead. They're not in Heaven anymore. They're—" His voice changes, and he pauses for a moment. "Huh. I guess they're all in the Empty now? With...um. With Cas, I guess."

 _Great. That's just_ great, thinks Dean. ' _Cause that means Cas is stuck with all his enemies, forever_.

_Which just means I definitely gotta find a way outta here, find a way into the Empty, and get him out._

"Still, though," Dean says to Sam, " _Almost_ all angels gone doesn't mean all. Somebody might be around. Let's be careful."

Sam nods. And then, sure enough, Dean hears a sound. A faint murmur of a voice. It's coming from the library. Sam's heard it too; Dean catches his eye, tilts his head to the stairway, and makes a walking motion with the fingers of one hand, miming careful tiptoeing. _Let's head down, but stay quiet._ Sam nods again; this routine's second nature, and they're both very, very practiced at walking silently.

Together they creep silently down to floor level. Once at the bottom, Dean checks a corner just under the stairs where he always has a few extra weapons stashed. He's pleased to find a shotgun and a crowbar there. Sam lets out a tiny little breath of a laugh, and Dean soon realizes why he's laughing: Apparently, Heaven for Winchesters means always having weapons nearby. Dean almost laughs too, but he grabs the weapons just the same, handing Sam the shotgun and taking the crowbar for himself.

Again comes the murmured voice from ahead. And this time they're close enough to hear it better.

The voice is saying, "I'd be delighted."

It's a low, rough, rumbling voice.

It's very familiar.

Dean feels the breath catch in his throat. Without thinking he rushes forward, all thoughts of silence gone, dashing into the library as quick as he can. His footfalls echo loudly through the bunker, and Sam scrambles to catch up behind him, hissing "Wait--"

It's Cas.

It's Castiel.

It's Castiel, sitting in a chair at one side of the library. He's alone. He's holding an empty glass. Cas turns his head and sees Dean, and he smiles.

Dean comes to a halt a few yards away, still clutching his crowbar, and he can only gape at Cas for a long moment. To see that face again....

Sam runs up beside Dean, saying "Cas? Oh my god, _Cas_?"

But Cas doesn't react at all to Sam's presence. He's looking only at Dean. And Dean can't breathe.

Cas looks straight at Dean, a soft smile on his face, and he seems the most beautiful sight Dean's ever seen. All the time Dean's spent driving around and around that long loop road in Chuck's strange customized version of Heaven, however many months or years it's been, and all the long hours he's spent by now since he woke up, trying to find a way out — for that entire time it's been a struggle to remember Cas's face. He's succeeded, now and then, in getting a clear memory. But it's something else entirely to have Cas right before him, at last, three-dimensional, looking right him. And those blue eyes seem to hold the whole world.

There are no tears in Cas's eyes this time.

"Cas?" Sam says again. It still seems like Cas hasn't even noticed Sam. "Cas?" Sam says, yet again, this time moving closer. But Cas takes no notice at all.

Sam takes a step closer still — he's only a few feet from Cas now — and now he even waves a hand in front of Cas's face, and snaps his fingers right in front of Cas's nose. "Cas?"

Cas pays no attention. Holding Dean's eyes, he says, "I'd be delighted." He draws a quick breath then, and opens his mouth slightly, as if just about to say something else, but he stops there, silent, without saying a word.

His words seem faintly familiar.

There's a peculiar, breathless, pause. It's like Cas is waiting for something.

"Delighted... about... what?" Dean finally manages to say.

After a long pause, Cas just repeats, "I'd be delighted." And again he pauses, with that air of being right on the brink of saying something more.

In a daze, Dean takes a step closer, still barely able to speak -- and still utterly unable to take his eyes off Cas's face. Cas's gaze is still fixed on Dean's face, Dean can feel his heart thumping in his chest, and all he can seem to do is stare right back at Cas, drinking in the details: that _face_ , oh that _face_ , and the way Cas is _looking at him_ , and his dark hair, his blue eyes, that piercing gaze... really, just everything about his face, actually... Even the clothes seem so hauntingly familiar that Dean's throat hurts just to see those familar colors and textures again. The rumpled blue tie — backwards, of course, Cas had always worn his tie backwards, how had Dean ever forgotten that? — the long rumpled tan coat, the black suit visible underneath, the white shirt, the black shoes — or, black ankle boots, actually, Dean notices. Every single detail seems important, and Dean's actually scanning Cas from head to toe, and back up, soaking it all up, trying to memorize every last detail.

"Cas?" Dean finally says again. But Cas just repeats, for at least the fourth time now, "I'd be delighted." Again he seems about to say something else; again he hesitates.

Sam, who's still standing very close to Cas, calls his name a few more times, but Cas's eyes remain fixed on Dean's face.

"He'll only talk to you," says Sam at last. "Damn, though, it's good to see his face again." Sam takes a step back. He's whispering again, almost reverent. "Dean... this has got to be one of your memories, don't you think?" He looks back and forth from Dean to Cas. "You had some conversations with him like this, now and then, didn't you? In the library like this? That whiskey sure looks like yours."

Dean hadn't noticed the whiskey, and takes it in now as Sam gestures at the scene. Cas is holding an empty glass, and there's a side table next to Cas that's got a second, matching, empty glass, along with a crystal decanter full of something that indeed looks very much like whiskey. It's one of the fancy vintage decanters from the Men Of Letters' liquor cabinet. Dean recognizes the decanter; it's one he only pulls out for special occasions.

And on the other side of the little table from Cas, a mere arm's-reach away from him, a second chair stands empty.

"That's probably your whiskey, right?" Sam says.

"I don't know," Dean says, his voice a little hoarse. "I don't remember." Absently, he sets the crowbar on one of the long library tables behind him. He feels dampness on his cheeks, now, and wipes it away roughly with the sleeve of one arm. "It's just _really_ good to see his face, Sam. Damn."

"You okay?" Sam says quietly, taking a close look at Dean. "Been a while since you saw him, right? Been since.... " Sam hesitates. "Well. Since we lost him."

 _Since he died_ , was what Sam had been about to say. Cas had died; that one fact is staying very clear in Dean's mind. The details of how exactly it had happened are still entirely unclear, but that terrible fact is piercingly present in his mind. Cas had died; Cas is gone.

Yet now here he is again.

Well... sort of.

"It's not really him," Dean says, his voice still rough. He swallows, gesturing at Cas. "He can't even really talk. He's just replaying one conversation. It's not Cas. No more than that Impala was really Baby."

"I know," says Sam. His voice is soft and gentle. Dean recognizes the tone; it's the Gentle Sam voice, Sam's console-the-victims voice. "I know," Sam repeats, still in that same voice. "He's gone."

"How did he die?" says Dean, still gazing at Cas. It's hard to even get the words out. "I can't remember."

Sam lets out a slow breath of air. They both stand silent for a moment, gazing at the peaceful-looking Castiel who's seated right in front of them, a Castiel who looks very much alive and well.

But it's not Castiel at all, is it?

"You never told me much," Sam finally says. "Just said he'd sacrificed himself to save you. Save you from Billie, I assumed? But honestly I never really got another word out of you about it. Just... Billie was gone, Cas was gone, Cas saved you."

Dean manages a quick nod. "Okay. Then this is just a... a shell. A memory."

"Yeah," say Sam. "And... it's not my memory, so it's gotta be yours. And it's... glitching, I guess. He's not finishing the memory. Whatever it is." He hasn't set his shotgun down, and he looks around the room now, glancing back toward the maproom, and craning his head toward the kitchen. He finally says, quite hesitantly, "Um... you wanna... maybe... check out the rest of bunker?" Sam looks back at Dean. "We probably should keep following the Axis Mundi. Assuming we can find it again. Maybe we should... um... move on?"

"Not yet," says Dean. "I want him to _finish the conversation_. ‘Cause I don't remember it."

"We, uh... probably should keep trying to find the Garden, at some point," Sam says. "Y'know. In a bit, anyway."

"I know. I know," says Dean. "Gimme a moment. Just... give me a moment, okay?"

Sam nods, and he backs off a few steps. And Dean sits in the second chair, and pours himself a shot of whiskey and then reaches over and pours a couple fingerfuls directly into Cas's glass. Cas seems to come more alive as Dean does so; he tracks Dean's face as Dean sits, turning his head to keep Dean in view, and then he even holds his glass over so Dean can pour the whiskey into it more easily. The whiskey-pouring seems to be the cue Cas was waiting for, for he then finally says the sentence he'd seemed perpetually about to say — which turns out to be "It's been a long time since we've shared a drink." Dean nods, and the nod seems to be enough for the next cue, and Cas starts talking. It's as if some kind of script has started up, or some kind of recording.

Which, of course, is exactly what it is. It's a recording from Dean's own memory.

And as Cas talks, the memory returns.

Dean sits transfixed, watching him. It feels as if the memory is freshly inscribing itself back into Dean's mind even as Cas is speaking. Now he realizes when this had all happened: It'd been shortly after Jack had returned. Jack had somehow been resurrected, Cas had somehow managed to find him, and they'd all been reunited. They'd even gotten Kaia back from that stormy alternate universe. That'd been a couple of big wins almost simultaneously, hadn't it?

Other bits of memory start returning. Like how this conversation had actually started. Cas had actually been flipping through some of the library books originally, Dean now remembers, and it had been Dean who'd settled down in a chair first, calling over to him, "C'mon, Cas, take a break. Take a seat. Let's sit for a bit." Cas had looked almost startled at that — and, then, pleased. Very pleased. He'd come over to join Dean, he'd sat, and then Dean had said "Want a drink?" Even though Cas didn't usually drink.

And Cas had replied "I'd be delighted."

And here Cas was, going through the whole conversation now with with Dean. He's going on a bit, too. Talking about how wonderful it was to get back Jack, how right it had felt. How he'd been so sure all along that Jack was... good. A good person. And Cas even describes, now, how he'd felt when Jack had died.

"I just felt _sure_ ," Cas says to Dean now. "The story wasn't over." He catches Dean's eye, and adds, "And I was right."

Dean's watching him, thinking, _He loved Jack so much. He must have been devastated_. Dean had been devastated too, of course — Jack really had come to feel like his own kid, somehow — but, of course, that whole thing with how Mom had died had been a major, major complication. Come to think of it... it's slowly dawning, now, slowly surfacing in memory, that there had been multiple months when Dean had been furious at Cas about putting Mom in danger. Furious to the point that Dean had blamed Cas, Cas specifically and nobody else, for Mom's death. There'd been quite a lot of strain between him and Cas, for a long time, hadn't there? Something about that whole series of events now seems rather illogical (Dean had _already known_ Jack was dangerous, so couldn’t it actually have been _Dean's_ fault? Or, it occurs to him now, maybe put the blame where blame should truly lie: Chuck had orchestrated the entire thing.) It's a little hard now to reconstruct why exactly Dean had felt so angry. The anger had just seemed to blossom, far out of proportion, and it had just... _stuck_ , somehow, for months.

Yet Cas had, in fact, been truly right about Jack all along. "I was right," says Cas now.

 _This was probably our first time in a long time where we really got to talk_ , Dean thinks.

_And... the first time in a long time when he opened up at all._

Because, another thing's becoming clear: Cas doesn't talk much about what he feels. Dean's getting the feeling now that it's always been a bit hard to get a read on him. Maybe it's that angel thing... it's never been totally clear what Cas feels, or how much he feels, or whether he feels things the same way a human would. But he _does_ feel things, that much is very clear.

"And I was right," says Cas again.

Sam, who's been been sitting very still on the library table, clears his throat. "I think that was your cue."

"What?" says Dean, jumping a little. He'd almost forgotten Sam was there.

"He's waiting for you to say the next bit, I think," say Sam. Dean blinks, and Sam has to remind him: "He just said: he knew the story wasn't over, and he was right."

The whiskey glass feels heavy in Dean's hand, it comes to Dean, suddenly, what to say next. He turns to Cas, raises his glass and says, "Here's to being right."

Cas lifts his glass in return, and reaches his glass partway over to Dean. Dean meets him halfway.

The little _clink_ echoes through the library.

 _That anger was totally gone by the time we had this talk_ , Dean realizes. That weird anger that had been eating him for months, about Cas. Wherever it had come from, it'd been gone by the time of this conversation. Like he'd finally been able to get back to normal.

"He's waiting again," Sam reminds him.

"Right, um..." says Dean. He's lost the thread of the conversation now, and helplessly he lifts his glass once again to Cas, who seems perfectly happy to clink glasses yet again. This time the little _clink_ succeeds in jarring the next bit of memory loose.

"I think I said something next..." says Dean, half to Sam and half to himself, "about getting revenge or something?...um... Icing on the cake!" It's only a half-remembered fragment, but it makes Cas laugh — an actual laugh — which seems as rare and precious as a jewel. A corner of Cas's mouth crooks up in a half-smile. Cas holds that smile for a long moment, his eyes fixed warmly on Dean's. And again Dean forgets Sam's even there; all he can think is, _That smile, that smile right there. That's why this is in my Heaven. That's why. We had one moment of peace, and I got Cas to laugh, and I got Cas to smile. That's why this is in my Heaven._

Cas holds the smile.

A shiver seems to pass over the room. There's a flicker in the lights. Dean's hand suddenly feels empty, and he realizes he's no longer holding his whiskey glass. Neither is Cas; both glasses are clean and empty and dry, sitting on the little table by the newly-full whiskey decanter. Cas seems to have almost paused; he's still gazing at Dean with that soft half-smile on his face, one corner of his mouth crooked up.

A long moment ticks by. Cas says nothing more.

"Guess it's over," Dean finally says, in a whisper.

"Yeah," says Sam. "Um... maybe we should... move on?"

"Yeah," says Dean. "I know." He stands, slowly. He has to force himself to take a step away; it feels physically painful to move out of Cas's line of sight. He can't help looking over his shoulder at Cas, who's now gazing at Dean's empty chair, apparently utterly unaware that Dean is no longer there.

 _It's not Cas_ , Dean has to remind himself. _Just a memory. Just a shadow._ He forces himself to turn, and walks stiffly away, saying, "Let's...uh... check the... kitchen."

"Yeah, um," says Sam, snatching up the crowbar from the library table (Dean's forgotten all about the crowbar) and hustling after him. "You could, um, do the conversation again, if you wanted? Maybe he'll start over and go through it again."

Dean pauses in the kitchen, and takes a heavy breath. "It's not him, Sam." He takes the crowbar from Sam and then aimlessly looks around, trying to get himself to think about the Axis Mundi again.

Sam's watching him, and he finally says, sounding a little puzzled, "That was a pretty short memory to have in your Heaven, isn't it? That's, um.... one of your top ten moments? He was just talking about Jack. Though, of course, it was awesome to get Jack back."

"We never got that much time to just hang out," says Dean. "We hardly ever got a moment to celebrate anything. And also...." He pauses, trying to put it into words.

 _He smiled at me_ , Dean thinks. _He smiled at me._ But Sam's not gonna get what that means.

Dean finally says, "I think that's one of the only times Cas voluntarily told me what he was actually feeling about anything."

"Oh, like... a bonding moment or something?" Sam suggests. He almost laughs as he adds, "That profound bond, or whatever?" But then he sobers, saying, "Actually, yeah, you guys had been snapping at each other for a while. But after Purgatory you guys got... I don't know, you got back on track, I think."

Dean gives him a slightly puzzled look — he doesn't remember anything about any recent trip to Purgatory — and he thinks back on the library conversation with Cas. Had Cas said anything about Purgatory? Had Dean? Maybe not, but—

And then he realizes something: he's _able_ to think back on it now. He's not just remembering what just happened right now, up in this fake Heaven-library. He's remembering the _real_ conversation, with real Cas, the conversation that had happened on Earth. Out loud Dean says, startled, "Oh! I got it back!"

"What?" says Sam.

"I got that memory back!" says Dean. "The memory of that conversation with Cas. It's here now." He taps his head. "So... that's something."

Sam smiles. "Well, that's good news. Maybe we can put the rest of our missing memories back together if we just kick around Heaven long enough? Or—"

"I'll make popcorn," interrupts a new voice from about two feet behind them. A female voice. Dean flinches hard, whipping around with the crowbar up, instinctively starting to swing it toward the source of the sound before he's fully processed who it is. But Sam moves faster still, and with a loud _clank_ he manages to parry Dean's crowbar up and away with the barrel of the shotgun. Which is fortunate, because Dean had been about to smack the crowbar directly into Eileen's face.

For a moment both brothers stand frozen, staring at Eileen. She's somehow materialized in the kitchen right behind them. She's just standing there cheerfully smiling at them, as if she hasn't at all minded nearly being clocked in the face by a crowbar.

"I'll make popcorn," she repeats, signing _popcorn_ simultaneously, both index fingers pointing up in alternation. A second later Sam shoves the shotgun at Dean, mutters "Take this", and now it's Dean's turn to hold both the weapons awkwardly, and sidle diplomatically off to the corner of the room, while Sam embraces Eileen.

Who is, of course, not really Eileen; in fact this Heaven-version of Eileen is still trying to talk even while Sam's wrapped her in a tight hug, determinedly making her way through her scripted conversation even though Sam's apparently gone way off-script with his hug. "I think I better make two bowls," she says, her voice almost totally muffled against Sam's shoulder, "because Cas and Dean always eat an entire bowl on their own. How does Castiel eat so much popcorn when he doesn't even need to eat?" She's even still trying to sign all this despite being hugged. Sam seems to be half-laughing, or maybe half-crying, his breath coming unevenly. Eventually he releases her and steps back. Eileen beams up at him, but she says nothing more. She just waits expectantly.

"And I think that was _your_ cue," Dean finally says. "She said, how does Cas eat so much popcorn." Dean doesn't remember this exact conversation - there'd been many times Eileen had hung out with them, but this particular moment seems to have involved only Sam and Eileen.

"Right, right," says Sam, rubbing a hand over his eyes. _"Damn,_ this is weird. Now I know why you looked so shell-shocked with Cas. Um, dammit, when was this? We made popcorn so many times. Oh, wait — " A light seems to come into Sam's eyes. "I know. I know what night this is. Yeah. I'm getting the feeling this was definitely a good memory."

"I can wait a bit," offers Dean. "If you wanna, like... go through it all."

"Uh... it might take all night," says Sam, and there's a dawning realization in his eyes, like quite a lot of the memory's starting to return. A shy smile flickers over his face, appearing and disappearing in a flash. "Um...yeah. Pretty sure this is a long one. You and Cas ended up watching cowboy movies, I think? That particular night? But me and Eileen were doing... something else." He's been looking at Eileen while he says this, but now his eyes stray to Dean's for a moment. "Man. It's tempting to relive it. Maybe you could go get Cas and... watch the cowboy movies? And I could hang with Eileen for a bit?" His gaze returns to Eileen, like he can't bear to look away.

"So much for, hey Dean, we definitely gotta go look for the Axis Mundi _right away_ ," says Dean, with a laugh.

"I know, I know," says Sam. "But... we probably _could_ take a bit of time here?"

Dean hesitates. Watch movies with Cas, while Sam relives a good memory of his own? Tempting indeed.

But Eileen's frozen posture, her eerily suspended smile, catch his eye. It's not really Eileen, of course. And....

He takes a slow breath, and says to Sam, "It's not real. That's not really Cas, back there in the library... and...."

Sam deflates a little at this comment, his shoulders dropping. He's still looking at Eileen, who's patiently smiling back at him, still waiting for the next line of the memory-script.

"Yeah," Sam says finally. "That's not really Cas in the library. And... this isn't really Eileen."

But still he gazes at her. Dean stays quiet.

Sam takes a breath. He then says to Eileen, rather carefully, like he's reciting a memorized phrase: "Uh... I think Cas... I think Cas eats the popcorn mostly to keep Dean company." It's clearly a line from his memory. It's Eileen's cue, in fact, for she springs to life again: her smile widens, and she laughs and then almost instantly stifles the laugh, like something about this comment is a private joke for her. But she just says, "I think he's on to something. Wanna go... eat some popcorn?"

She moves closer to Sam and goes up on tiptoes, angling her face up; Sam instantly bends down to meet her, and they kiss. Dean glances away, wishing he could give Sam some privacy; but it's a quick kiss, playful and affectionate but brief. Though, clearly, full of potential. The kiss ends; Eileen grins up at Sam, and then turns away to grab some popcorn from the cupboard. A moment later she says, "I think I gotta get more popcorn from the storeroom. Your brother and his angel keep eating it all up. Be right back." She disappears down the hall.

Sam watches her go, and he turns, slowly, to Dean. He's touching his lips lightly with one hand, as if trying to figure out if the kiss, at least, had been real. "I know it's not really her," he says, "but _damn_ , it's convincing." A faraway look comes into his eye, and he adds, "You know what else. Like you said with Cas, I got that memory back now. I didn't even get to go through the whole memory, but I think the whole thing's back."

"And it's a good memory?" Dean asks — though he doesn't really have to.

Sam gives a little laugh. "A really good one. Yeah."

Dean feels a quick little pang of envy at this comment. He's always been happy about Sam having found Eileen, but sometimes he can't help wishing he had something like that too. 

_Been years,_ Dean thinks to himself. _Years._ The last time he'd even really slept around much had been during his demon days. Which had been a whole strange time, of course...with... with... _Crowley_ , of all the possible choices. _Crowley_. This thought always comes slowly, filtered through the haze of the demon-influenced thoughts of that time, and tinged with a certain frustrated disbelief. For why had it been _Crowley_ , of all people, who really was _not_ Dean's top choice for an orgy partner....

Dean shakes his head. There's something elusive flitting around this memory, too. Something, maybe, about who his top choice would have been. But he can't grasp it; it's gone.

"Let's move on," Sam says. Dean's been holding both weapons, shotgun in one hand and crowbar in another while Sam dealt with the Eileen memory, and Sam now takes the shotgun back. "Axis Mundi," Sam says. "It's gotta be around here somewhere."

"You sure?" asks Dean, who's still a little tempted by the cowboy-movie idea.

Sam nods. "Reliving the greatest hits is a nice idea, I guess. But I'd really rather find the real Eileen and make _more_ greatest hits. Real greatest hits. In real life." He frowns at the floor for a moment and finally looks up at Dean. "We don't know how long we've been up here. But we know Jack was trying to reach us."

It's a sobering thought, and Dean knows what Sam's getting at. "Jack needs help, you mean," says Dean. "Or at least he sure sounded like he at least wanted some advice. We gotta keep focused: get out of here, find the Garden, get back to Earth. Find Jack."

Sam nods. "Then find Eileen."

"Then find Eileen," Dean agrees, and he can't help adding, "And get Cas back." It sounds so easy when he just says it like that.

"Break out of Heaven, find Jack, find Eileen, break into the Empty, get Cas back, then see what else needs doing and do it," summarizes Sam.

"So... we got work to do?" says Dean, smiling a little.

That, at least, makes Sam grin. "Yep. We got work to do."

* * *

But where's the Axis Mundi? Dean's first thought is that it might be the road outside the bunker. They return to the front door — or rather, Sam returns to the front door, while Dean takes a long pause in the library to sit again with Castiel, who's once again saying "I'd be delighted", and Dean ends up going through the entire conversation again while Sam goes up the stairs to try to check the driveway outside. But Sam soon returns, reporting that the front door won't even open.

Dean manages, once again, to tear himself away from the robotic Castiel, and they start checking every room, and walking every hallway, looking for the next part of the Axis Mundi.

The hallways seem a good guess — maybe one of the hallways will turn into the Axis Mundi while they're walking it? So they wind their way through the bunker, walking every hallway back and forth. They check all the way to the back storerooms. But then as they're walking down the far back hallway to one of the very last doors, Dean's suddenly overcome with a rush of panic. It surges up in him out of nowhere, a wild surge of adrenaline that's abruptly shooting through him, and at once's his heart's pounding, with something near to terror. And it's not just panic, he soon realizes. It's _despair_. It's a terrible sensation, a sudden heavy conviction that all is lost, that he's doomed, that some impossible catastrophe has overwhelmed him. The wave of sheer hopelessness stops him dead in mid-stride and he has to put one hand out to the wall, hunched over and clutching at his chest, gasping with the shock of it.

"What is it?" Sam's asking, hovering close by his side. He grips Dean's arm with one hand. "You all right?"

Dean barely hears him. Because he _almost_ remembers something.

A searing pain in his chest. Barely able to stand. Black spots in his vision, unable to get enough air. But — someone helping him, too. An arm wrapped tightly around him, supporting him; he's leaning on someone, trying to keep moving—

_I've got you, I've got you—_

Not Sam. Sam's standing right next to him right now, but the memory that's resurfacing is about someone else, someone several inches shorter.

 _Tan coat_ , Dean remembers.

Castiel.

Castiel had been helping Dean struggle down this very hallway, while something terrible approached from behind.

Dean's staring at the floor now, one hand on his chest, his other hand still braced on the wall. His crowbar, forgotten, seems to have fallen to the floor beside him.

"Dean?" asks Sam. "What's wrong?"

Dean swallows and manages to straighten up. He waves Sam onward, muttering, "I'm fine. Just... some kinda deja vu. Go check that last door."

"Looked like one hell of a deja vu," Sam says. "You sure you're okay?"

Dean makes himself give Sam a weak smile, and stoops to pick up the crowbar. "I'm fine, I swear. Just another memory glitch. Go on. One last room to check."

Sam hesitates, a worried frown on his face. Finally he turns to the last door and puts his hand on the knob.

But the door won't open.

"The doorknob won't even turn," Sam reports. "It won't even... it doesn't even jiggle at all when I try to turn it. It's like it's welded in place." He tries jiggling the knob again, and after pushing on the door for a few more moments he says, "It's like it's...not even really a door? It doesn't even have that tiny bit of give. Like the hinges aren't real. Um... gimme your crowbar."

Dean just marches up and starts attacking the door himself, with the crowbar (it helps to burn off a bit of the lingering adrenaline). Sam lends his weight to it too, and together they finally manage to pry a hole in one part of the door. Only to find there's no storeroom behind it, no room at all, nothing but a blank brick wall.

"Fake door," Sam concludes. "So... why are all the other bunker rooms here in this Heaven, while this one room isn't?"

Dean's managed to settle himself a bit more by now. "Bad memories there, maybe," he says. "Maybe Heaven doesn't include the rooms where bad stuff happens."

"Bad stuff has happened in _every_ room in this bunker," Sam points out.

"I'm thinking some especially bad stuff happened in that room in particular," Dean says, and he knows already what it must be. It's about Cas. This must be the door to the room he's been half-glimpsing in those awful little scraps of memory, the ones about the blood sigil and the shining blackness and Cas smiling through tears.

Something bad happened in that room. Something about Cas.

Probably something about how Cas had died.

And Dean's not at all sure he wants to remember.

"Let's get out of here," says Dean finally. "The Axis Mundi's not here."

"Yeah but—" starts Sam, but Dean's already turned on his heel and is stalking back along the hallway. Sam hurries to catch up, but he doesn't say anything, just gives Dean a quiet look.

"We must've missed something," Dean says. "The Axis Mundi's gotta continue. This can't be a dead end."

He's concentrating ferociously now on the Axis Mundi — anything to avoid thinking about whatever had happened in that back room. They check all the other rooms again. They walk all the other hallways all over, and check every closet. They check out the garage, which turns out to have the usual cars in it (including yet another fake Impala). But the garage door won't open, and sitting in the cars doesn't seem to do anything. The cars won't even start up.

Unsure what to do, the brothers return to the library. And it turns out Castiel, the library version of Castiel, has disappeared.

There's nothing left of him at all — the library's still got the usual chairs and tables, the usual books, the usual telescope at the back, but there's no sign of Castiel. The whiskey and the glasses are gone too; all that's left are the two chairs and sidetable, which are both in their usual positions.

It seems an awful blow. After that weird deja-vu episode near the back storeroom, Dean realizes he's been especially craving to see Cas's face again, and had even been hoping to go through the little whiskey conversation maybe just one more time. The empty library seems a terrible loss. Dean slumps down in the chair he'd sat in before, looking at Cas's empty chair, while Sam circles back through the kitchen.

Sam soon returns to report, a little grimly, that Eileen has disappeared as well.

Dean gestures at the empty side table next to him. "I'd suggest we drown our sorrows, but even my whiskey's gone."

"Huh," says Sam, coming up to his side. As Dean stands slowly, feeling very tired now, Sam says, "It's like it's realized we don't want to go through the memories anymore. Or I mean, not that we don't _want_ to, but we're not _planning_ to. Um... think it could be..." His voice drops to a whisper and he glances around. "...y'know, Chuck? Does he know what we're up to? Is he turning it all off, or something?"

Dean considers that. Though Cas and Eileen are gone, the bunker still feels peaceful. "Doesn't feel like Chuck's style," he finally says. "Too quiet. It's more like... maybe this Heaven tries to respond to what we actually want? Like how it made that storeroom door a fake door... I really didn't want to open it, you know." At that, Sam looks a little quizzically at Dean, but Dean goes on with, "What we both actually want most right now is to move on. I wonder if it's trying to help us, almost?"

They look around the library one more time but it all looks like normal — tables, chairs, books, and the telescope, which is spot-lit against the back wall in its usual little curtained nook. Everything looks normal. They return to the front room, where Dean tries the front door once again (it still won't open — Dean's concluding that there seems to be no "outside" at all in this particular Heaven). Sam even spends a few minutes looking at the map on the table, peering at it closely in case the map turns out to have some kind of tiny illustrated road.

Somewhat at a loss, Dean heads back to the library, where he gazes for a long moment at Cas's empty chair.

 _This Heaven knows that's a good memory for me, but it also knows I'm trying to go somewhere else,_ he thinks. _It's trying to help us_. He looks around. Same old bunker. Same old tables, chairs, and books. Same old telescope, sitting in its little nook, framed by those old velvet curtains, a golden spotlight drawing the eye right to it—

"Sam," says Dean quietly.

Sam comes up next to him, and Dean points at the telescope. "Wasn't that supposed to be an interdimensional-something kind of telescope?" said Dean. "The Axis Mundi's probably an interdimensional-something too, don't you think?"

"Interdimensional geoscope, I think? Whatever that meant," says Sam. "It does seem to be kind of... extra-spotlit, wouldn't you say?"

"Let's take a look," said Dean. They exchange a glance, and Sam walks forward and puts his eye to one of its old brass fittings.

He twiddles a knob.

Then: "Oh, Dean, you gotta see this—"

—and Sam's gone. The shotgun clatters to the floor. Sam's just _gone_ , blinked out of existence like he'd never been there.

"Sam!" Dean yells, scrambling toward the telescope. "Fuck, fuck fuck fuck," he mutters, shuffling around it to the side Sam had been on, trying to remember which of the brass things is the eyepiece. "Don't leave me behind, don't let us get separated, _fuck_ , c'mon, Axis Mundi—". He finds the old brass eyepiece and puts his eye to it, and discovers it's somehow showing a view of the Milky Way — a trail of thousands of distant stars.

 _Some see a tunnel, or light_ , Cas had said.

"Pathway of light," whispers Dean to himself. "C'mon."

It's a little fuzzy. Dean finds a brass focus knob, and twirls it. The stars begin to come into focus, a whole river of stars. There's a moment of dizzying vertigo, and Dean feels he's falling _down_ , down a waterfall made of stars, and then there's stars all around him. Once again, the whole world disappears.

* * *

_A/N - More next week, I hope. Please leave a comment if you're enjoying this! I always love to hear if there was something in particular you liked - an idea, a setting, a phrase. Thank you for reading :)_


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